When Tomorrow Comes

After Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne had been paired together in the fabulous Love Affair (1939), someone decided to pair them together again (that's the other film of theirs- Together Again (1944)), and this was the result.

It starts as a drama about women going on strike for unfair wages and there's a lot of time devoted to a working people's union, then Dunne meets Boyer and the next part of the film is devoted to their acquaintance, then there is a hurricane and they're forced to take refuge in a church, then there's drama involving Boyer, his unstable wife (gee, it's Barbara O'Neill! What a shocker! 😏) and his love with Dunne, but this being a Hollywood movie, the good couple wins- moralistically, of course. This was made under the production code, after all.

It's not that the film needed a couple of cuts- in fact, with all the plot changes, it should have been half an hour longer, or even two Dunne-Boyer films. It's that it jumps around too much and it's boring.

Dunne's working woman fair wages campaign is pretty much forgotten about after she falls in love with Boyer. Not enough time is given to Barbara O'Neill's character, other than to develop her as a crazy psycho b*tch, and remind us that O'Neill was so much more effective as Boyer's crazy psycho b*tch wife in All This, And Heaven Too (1940).

Dunne is no more or less annoying than usual- she sings a song while Boyer plays the piano, so her fans will like that. Me, I'm not overly fond of her singing, and so I just tuned out until she was done.

She and Boyer have chemistry that was just as good as what they had in Love Affair, and this film has a moralistic ending too, but what the ending of Love Affair is sweet and will bring a tear to your eye, the ending of this one is like "Well, now it's over and you can do something else now." The acting is pretty good, O'Neill is very over-the-top, but if you've seen AT,AHT, you know what to expect from her in a role like this.

Overall, not as good as Love Affair, but not quite as bad as Together Again. It won't kill you if yoy watch it, but it's disappointing.

I stayed with this hoping for something and it delivered squat. I actually got hooked in the beginning which would have made a very good movie...when Dunne is essential in getting coworkers "the girls" to support a strike against her boss, never seen, of a chain of restaurants. The first part of the film sets up a smart, working women facing the exploitation of the bosses....and she is pursued by the union rep, a handsome man. Instead she becomes tied up in a subsequent dreary plot with Boyer. The first part of the film is charming and interesting and she's an arresting character. Even he is mildly interesting. The slice of 1939 life they partake of is very well played: going to the piers where people are cooling off pre AC, helping a kid who's skinned his knee, lost his pants held up by rope. He's pushing his friend in a go cart. After setting up an interesting film they are caught in a storm. Held up in a church. Which holds up the film. Even that is passably interesting. Finally, we meet Boyer's mad wife who isn't so addled when away from her mother and her minder. She wants her husband. And Dunne as a good woman in a 1939 movie, isn't going to fight her for him. This is all trite. Had it been a light, romantic comedy built around striking women it would have been a good film. A film about a strong, smart woman leading a strike. As it is...I guess this is what is called condescendingly "a woman's film" like today's "chick flicks" and it's a bore.

While not as big and splashy as their pairing in "Love Affair" released the same year, Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer star in what is rather a "small" film. "When Tomorrow Comes" is a tale of unrequited love between two people who because of the man being bound to a mentally ill wife can never be together. Irene Dunne convincingly plays an underemployed ordinary working gal, one who aspires to be a singer but who is stuck toiling the days away as a waitress. Her character bonds with Boyer's character by disobeying her restaurant's "no substitutions" rule and fulfilling his request for French apple pie. This scene is endearing as she dares to simply place a piece of cheese on top of a slice of hot apple pie and cover the pie until the cheese melts--LOL, "it ain't nothing' but a thing" as Dunne goes the extra step to please the customer. From then on the two are friends and go off together to explore Manhattan and go sailing together. Their would be love affair is derailed by nothing less than a hurricane and the reappearance of Boyer's wife, played here by Barbara O'Neill. O'Neill steals the show as she portrays a woman who is mentally unbalanced, but not for the reason everyone suspects. While her illness is attributed to the death of her infant son, we soon discover that she is using this as an excuse to keep Boyer bound to her. In the scene where Dunne confronts her and pleads for her to release Boyer, we are chilled by O'Neill's psychopathic threat to do harm to Boyer should he leave her for Dunne. O'Neill is scary as hell and Dunne understands as the audience does that she is promising to do Boyer harm not merely threatening to. Because of this, Dunne knows that Boyer can never be hers and for this reason she must bid him farewell forever. The final scene where they part ways as she exits from the restaurant where they are having their last supper together is a tearjerker. No matter how many times she plays the poignant heroine who is called on to do the right thing, Dunne nails it. Her pain is our pain. Boyer's pain in losing her is also our own. Their love is lost and the pain is unbearable.

This is a heart-rending story covered up in a romantic comedy of many wonderful and surprising turnings, and it is impossible to guess at the sad conclusion of this very entertaining and stimulating journey. It's a typical Irene Dunne film, it's like a twin shadow of "Love Affair" of the same year, but although this film is more hearty and gleeful in its romantic ways, it is more tragic than "Love Affair", which puts on a more sinister fateful aspect but nevertheless ends better. Here you are faced with a truly hopeless situation with no end to its abysmal tragedy, which no one can do anything about, and still Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne settle to make the best of it and hope for tomorrow anyway, and maybe, after all, it will come...

Love Affair proved so popular a film that Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne were reteamed in When Tomorrow Comes at Universal Pictures.

Dunne who is usually chic and stylish plays a cafe waitress who gets to wait on Charles Boyer. No one there including Dunne realizes he's a world famous concert pianist.

Dunne goes on strike as the waitresses get organized. Boyer courts her when she's not on the picket line. They have a nice romantic interlude on Long Island when a hurricane hits.

Boyer is keeping secrets from her like the fact he's already married to Barbara O'Neil who has some mental issues.

There's a choice to be made by both of them that's obvious. What they do is for you to watch the film for.

Both keep up the same romantic standard set in Love Affair. When Tomorrow Comes won an Oscar for Sound Recording. Fans of the stars will approve