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Besides providing Ronald Reagan with his career role and the title of his pre-presidential autobiography, Kings Row is a finely crafted piece of film making by director Sam Wood. The film got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best black and white Cinematography for James Wong Howe.

Incredibly though, the rich musical score that Erich Wolfgang Korngold did was overlooked by the Academy. That's the thing you will take away from watching the film, even more so than Ronald Reagan's anguished cry of 'where's the rest of me'.

The story takes place at the turn of the last century with an interlude of ten years from 1890 to 1900 where we see the leads as children first and then as adults. Despite Ronald Reagan getting all the notice here, he's actually third billed in the cast. Above him are Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings and it's really the Cummings character whom the film is centered around.

King's Row is the town these folks inhabit, purportedly based on Fulton Missouri, the hometown of author Henry Bellamann. This may be set in Missouri, but don't expect no Tom Sawyer like story. If in fact the novel is based on Bellamann's experiences growing up, he must have had one Gothic childhood.

Sam Wood assembled an incredible cast of supporting players, like Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn, Harry Davenport, Minor Watson, Nancy Coleman, and Kaaren Verne. Coburn and Anderson are the parents of Coleman and they don't like the fact she's keeping company with Reagan who's playing the entire Kings Row field. In addition Coburn is a doctor who is also a sadist, he does things like perform operations without use of anesthetic. I'm sure he had heard of Dr. Morton and his successful use of ether by this time.

The best in the cast though is Claude Rains, something he usually was in a lot of films. He's another doctor, totally different from Coburn. He's a famous medical practitioner who has chosen to hide himself away in this small and obscure town. He's got a wife who never comes out and a daughter who grows up to be Betty Field who is suddenly and abruptly taken out of school as a child. It's with him who Robert Cummings studies medicine with to pass the examination and go to school in Europe to become a doctor.

Rains's tragic story is what sets in motion the rest of the story that climaxes with Reagan's anguished cry. Rains creates such a mysterious and sad air about him that you think about him more than anyone else in the movie.

Kings Row begs comparison to Our Town which is partly set in the generation where the Cummings, Field, Reagan, and Sheridan characters all grow up. Grover's Corners has its share of tragedies as well as happy times.

Kings Row and Our Town should be run back to back in order to see what I'm referring to. It's not a bad double bill, in fact quite a literate one.

Kings Row is perhaps the granddaddy of all small-town epics--a strong story line, an excellent cast and all of it punctuated by one of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's most melodious background scores. Considering this was done in the early '40s, the subject matter is handled honestly but with the kind of discretion it would never receive by any of today's filmmakers. Instead, you are asked to connect the dotted lines on the subject of incest, insanity, sadism and moral corruption behind closed doors and come up with your own observations. Two outstanding leads are Ann Sheridan (never more heartbreakingly honest and moving as the girl from the wrong side of the tracks) and Ronald Reagan as the carefree man she loves and sticks by when fate deals him a hard blow. Robert Cummings is too weak in the central role of Parris--he was always much more suited to comedy than strong drama. But the rest of the large supporting cast are extremely effective--Nancy Coleman (on the brink of insanity after her doctor father's horrific act), Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn (as the sadistic doctor), Claude Rains and Betty Field. Wonderful black and white photography by James Wong Howe, excellent script by Casey Robinson, meticulous production design by William Cameron Menzies and, of course, that pulsating Korngold score--all create one of the most powerful films of the '40s. Ann Sheridan was never better--and Ronald Reagan is fully up to the requirements of a difficult role.

For those who made fun of President Reagan's movie career by always citing "Bedtime for Bonzo" and laughing may be surprised if they take the time to watch "Kings Row." Even "Bedtime for Bonzo" is not as bad as those who have never seen it think it is, because of the ridiculous title. The former sports announcer plays Drake McHugh as well or better than any other Hollywood actor of the period could have. He stands tall among an extremely talented group of actors, including several others who have also been underrated and never received their due by the Hollywood establishment, especially Bob Cummings and Ann Sheridan. There's also Judith Anderson of "Rebecca" fame; Claude Rains who first made a name for himself in a part were he was invisible through most of the film; Charles Coburn, the grand old man of 40's cinema, playing against type in "Kings Row" as not such a grand old man; Maria Ouspenskaya in a non-horror role; and Betty Field shines as the tortured soul, Cassie.

Sam Wood's magnificent direction plus the acting keep the story from slipping into soap opera melodrama. True heart-rending sentiment rather than sappy sentimentality emerges from the social and economic conflicts that mix with human kindness and cruelty in small-town America at the turn of the last century. Though there is an element of nostalgia for a vanishing America, it never becomes petty or commonplace.

I have never been to America, but this movie seems so familiar. It reminds me so much of the apartment building I grew up in Calcutta. Maybe because people everywhere are essentially the same, or maybe because every character in this movie is a carefully thought out archetype. The Good Grandson who is the apostle of virtue, the Sacrificing Best Friend, the Spunky Girl, the men who live on the wrong side of the tracks but are still nobler than the rich old townspeople, the Old Man with Something to Hide, the Evil Man with an Honorable Facade, etc. In fact just the crowd u'd meet anywhere u live. That's what, I feel, gives this movie its timelessness. Add to it James Wong Howe's lustrous b&w photography like an old family photo polished everyday by the doting old maid, the assured editing that pieces together scenes straddling across time [Parris, the good little boy to Parris the good young man] & space [Americana to Vienna, like the new year msg in Parris' letter from Vienna dissolving into another msg scratched out on the snow in King's Row], Sam Wood's confident direction [he had done 'Our Town' too] & brilliant all round acting. Reagan blew my mind & so did Anne Sheridan. Wish Robert Cummings was less wimpy, but you can't take it all, can you?

A great movie, see it!

Henry Bellamann's account of small town life at the turn of the twentieth century, with its central themes of incest, suicide, religious fanaticism, homosexuality, euthanasia and sadism (among other less controversial topics), assured its best seller status when the book was first published in 1940. When Warner Brothers released its film version two years later, much of the story's sensational content was altered or eliminated entirely and yet the movie remained surprisingly compelling. The first part of the film concerns itself primarily with Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings), the sensitive and idealistic doctor-in-training, and his volatile relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Cassie (played by Betty Field), and it's less successful because of the films inability to deal honestly with the demons that haunt Cassie. (The revelation that Cassie is being molested by her father is jettisoned completely and the movie, instead, settles for the explanation that Cassie is mentally ill. The frantic and desperate interludes that Parris and Cassie share, however, fevered by a kind of histrionic intensity, don't make much sense within this context and the viewer is left feeling somewhat bewildered by it all). The second part of the film, which focuses on the other major love story, that of Parris' best friend Drake (Ronald Reagan) and Randy (Ann Sheridan), the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks, is more faithful to Bellamann's novel and altogether more satisfying. There is also a fascinating subplot, involving Drake's abandoned sweetheart, Louise (Nancy Coleman), that helps to sustain the film and propel the movie to its dynamic conclusion. Though Cummings, as Parris, is bland and overly-sincere, the movie contains what is considered to be Ronald Reagan's finest screen performance (not that the competition had been that keen) and Ann Sheridan is an immensely warm and lovely presence. The film belongs, however, to it's amazing supporting cast, comprised of some of Hollywood's finest character players: Betty Field, touching as the frightened and disturbed Cassie; the wonderful Claude Rains, beautifully underplaying as Cassie's sad, troubled father; Maria Ouspenskaya, characteristically cast as Parris' wise and loving grandmother; and, in particular, Nancy Coleman as the hysterical Louise, the sexually repressed daughter of religious fanatics (Charles Coburn and Judith Anderson). The memorable score, by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, adds immeasurably to the mood.