The War Against Mrs. Hadley

As Fay Bainter in the title role in The War Against Mrs. Hadley celebrates her birthday with family and close friend Edward Arnold, the war raging in Europe and Asia seems all too far away. Arnold in fact works for the War Department and is involved in those negotiations with those Japanese emissaries. But Bainter's birthday is December 7 and when her favorite symphony is interrupted on the radio with news of Pearl Harbor, this Republican dowager's world is rudely rearranged.

This film is a snapshot in time of the home front in Washington, DC during the early years of World War II. Bainter is quite specifically identified as a Republican whose husband had opposed many of the New Deal policies and she reflects his views. In fact she refuses to read the newspaper that her husband had sold to Isobel Elsom who changed the editorial policy to pro-Roosevelt. And the many activities of the home front during the war years like blackouts are just something to put up with.

Both her children Jean Rogers and Richard Ney are rebelling under her genteel but iron thumb. Rogers works in the USO and falls for working class soldier Van Johnson and Ney first balks, but then wants to go to war and do his bit. Ney works for Arnold in the War Department and Arnold letting him go causes a breach between him and Bainter.

In real life Fay Bainter was married to a military man and her attitudes were the opposite of Mrs. Hadley. In fact she and her husband are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. She gives a dignified and restrained performance as a woman who has reality crash in on her.

Arnold's character is interesting and quite within the times. FDR in 1940 after the fall of France appointed establishment Republicans Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox as Secretaries of War and the Navy respectively. Arnold is clearly a Stimson man brought in like his boss as part of a united war effort. Something the 43rd president did not seek after 9/11. How different our history in the past eleven years might have been if he had. But FDR was the best example of how to make a war coalition.

I must also single out Spring Byington playing one of her patented airhead roles as Bainter's friend. Reality falls in on her as well, but it was a struggle.

The War Against Mrs. Hadley is a curious and dated epic. Even with an attack right here on mainland USA you couldn't make this kind of film today. Too many things working against it.

... but I was very pleasantly surprised! Directed by Harold S. Bucquet, who is probably best known for the Doctor Kildare series, and made early during WWII, I was expecting lots of flag waving, speechifying, and pat answers and situations. Instead this movie took on the war from a different tack and was quite human and realistic. It looked at the war from the vantage point of a very rigid society matron in Washington D. C. - a WASP upper class Republican to be exact, Fay Bainter as Mrs. Hadley. When her late husband owned a certain local paper its editorial board took a Republican point of view, but now the Winter family owns the paper and it has slanted Democratic. For this reason she refuses to speak to Mrs. Winter, current owner of the paper now that her own husband has died.

It is Dec. 7, 1941, and news of the attack on Pearl Harbor comes in on the radio on the very birthday of Mrs. Hadley. She doesn't want to hear about this war, and wants the radio turned off. However, there is no way she can turn off the war's impact on her way of life. Her son has always been a slacker and a drinker, and now he is being drafted. Her good friend Fulton (Edward Arnold) at the war department refuses to do anything about it. She cuts off their friendship. Her daughter Pat starts volunteering at a canteen, falls in love with a soldier with a Catholic working class background and ends up marrying him. She boycotts the wedding. Her butler becomes an air warden and enters her bedroom one night during a black out turning off all of the lights and ends up frightening her half to death. Worst of all, her best friends are going to Mrs. Winters' house to train in first aid. When she learns of this, she cuts them all out of her life too. Mrs. Hadley is getting so good at cutting things off and out that she should have taken up tree surgery.

So come her next birthday, Mrs. Hadley has only her personal physician and her servants around her. She's got her pride, but no friends or family beside her, unable to deal with the fact that war is the great equalizer. So how will this all turn out? Watch and find out.

I liked how the movie kept moving and didn't get over sentimental. Fay Bainter took a role that could have had you disliking her completely, and sprinkled it with enough humanity that you could still like or at least empathize with the woman even though you disliked her actions.

In short I'd recommend it. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and I'd say that it probably deserved that nod.

"The War Against Mrs. Hadley" is a film about one lady's experience dealing with WWII. Mrs. Hadley is a wealthy widow who is used to being catered to and getting her own way. So, when the war arrives, she expects that life will continue as before and that 'other people' need to make sacrifices but not her. At first, it is easy to understand why many folks cater to her and her whims but as the film progresses, Mrs. Hadley's narcissism becomes intolerable...and you wonder when and how she'll get her comeuppance...or how she'll learn to get over herself!

The subject matter in this movie made for excellent propaganda....and helped the audience to feel a strong sense of community and need to be a part of the war effort. And, at the time, there were some folks who had no problem looking out only for themselves. On the other hand, at times Mrs. Hadley was occasionally too awful...too clueless and too one-dimensional that it was a bit hard to watch. Subtle, it was not...yet overall a wonderful movie about WWII and its impact on the folks at home.

With the war raging by 1942, this film was certainly timely. It really showed the isolationists what they were-selfish in every sense of the word.

As Mrs. Hadley, Faye Bainter etched an unforgettable character in a truly under-rated performance. Her late husband, a newspaper editor, wanted one-term presidencies and not only opposed FDR's policies, but was totally against his running for a 3rd term in 1940. Surrounded by memorabilia of Republican administrations, the war and everything else occurring in the film is a direct threat to Mrs. Hadley's very existence. Her erudite manner and apparent sophistication,in a world of snobby people looking down on others, is depicted beautifully. She even, as an over-protective mother, tries to get her son out of serving in the army.

Bainter is supported by a marvelous cast. Jean Rogers is the daughter who will buck her to marry army private Van Johnson. In the same year that he played the son to the Miniver's, Richard Ney is convincing as the alcoholic son who finds his way out of his mother's orbit by going into the service.

Edward Arnold is an old family friend, who works for the government and makes sure that Ney is drafted to the consternation of Mrs. Hadley.

Then, there is Spring Byington as Cecelia, Bainter's faithful friend who doesn't share her disposition and contempt for others.

Coming from an Oscar nominated turn in "How Green Was My Valley," Sara Allgood is wonderful as Van Johnson's mother, who knows how to deal with Mrs. Hadley. Allgood's Irish brogue and manner serves her well again. It should be noted that Allgood really should have won the supporting Oscar for 'Valley.'

The film works well because it ultimately deals with the human spirit. No matter what our differences, national emergency must bring us together to fight for the American ideal against totalitarianism.

A memorable film dealing with an epic time in history.

This begins in an elegant manner and is a serious film. It has a fantastic cast, almost entirely made up of character actors. Edward Arnold could be the only one ho ever starred in A pictures, though Fay Bainter, in the title role here, could have been said to also.

Bainter's character lives in a bubble. She's a rich widow in Washington, DC, who refuses to pay attention to the sounds of W.W.II, right up through Pearl Harbor. Her daughter (Jean Rogers, not quite believable as a child of privilege) meets a military man, the young Van Johnson. Her alcoholic son is sent off to war by influential Arnold, rather than disgrace Bainter, whom he loves.

Etc.

It works well, even to the end, though it becomes less plausible as it moves toward its resolution. Would patrician Bainter/Hadley really embrace the working class mother-in-law of her daughter to such a degree? Seems unlikely.

There are strange overtones of homosexuality in this movie. At its start we see a bouquet being delivered to Bainter. It evolves that the woman who cuts her hair sent it. Everyone wonders why. Her friend Spring Byington says, "Maybe she's musical!" and all laugh. My understanding from older friends is that this was a code for gay/lesbian in the 1940s.

This could be my imagination, but the bouquet is never explained and w never again hear about, let alone see, the hair stylist.

Regardless, it's an elegant movie that, with a bigger budget, could have been a very fine one.