That Brennan Girl

I saw this film last night on Youtube and it's remarkably good. Mona Freeman gives a stunning performance as Ziggy, the young and troubled heroine of the movie.

This is the kind of part that somebody like Jean Simmons or even Audrey Hepburn might have fitted well into. And Mona Freeman's acting here stands up to anything they might have done in the part. The rest of the cast are equally fine. Had this movie been made by one of the bigger studios of the day it would,I think, have been better none. It certainly deserves to be better none as it's definitely more than a B picture.

Mona Freeman was brought up by a tough, money-hungry, shady, single mother -- June Duprez in quite a change from her role in THE THIEF OF BAGDAD -- and soon falls in with grifting James Dunn. When she steals a watch from a drunk military man, Dunn shows some patriotism and tells her to give it back.... and she winds up married, a war widow and struggling to keep her baby in this movie directed by Alfred Santell.

Miss Freeman was 20 when she made this movie, but she always seemed younger than she was, a factor which hampered her screen career; in this, she looks quite convincing in the opening scene as a 14-year-old girl buying a flower for her mother. She gives a fine, layered performance, but the script, from a story by Adele Rogers St. John, tries to cover too many bases, half tough-girl drama, half weepy-mother-loses-baby soap, with a dose of judicial moralizing and a dash of miraculous intervention. As a result, her characterization, and that of James Dunn, fresh off an Academy Award win for A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN may seem not so much nuanced as inconsistent.

I think not. I think it's a good movie, although I find the first half more interesting. That, however, is largely because I don't care for weepy melodramas. Judging by the record, no one was particularly impressed by this picture at the time. Dunn's career resumed its slide, aided by alcoholism; Freeman worked in minor movies for another ten years, then in television until 1972; and Santell, whose directorial career had begun in 1916, and who lived until 1981, never directed another movie.

The title role in That Brennan Girl is played by Mona Freeman who learned early and hard to be a cynic. This was a loan out role for Freeman for this Republic production because at her home studio of Paramount she was normallyy playing sweet young ingenues.

Freeman has a great example set to her by her mother June Duprez who says land a man with a bank account and hang on tight. Still she's a romantic sort and does fall for sailor William Marshall.

It all ends tragically for her when Marshall is killed during the war. But he's left something behind and that forces an attitude readjustment.

Top billed however in That Brennan Girl is James Dunn who was a lead in the 30s with Fox but who gradually fell out of top tier parts and studios due to a drinking problem. But winning an Oscar for A Tree Grows In Brooklyn the previous year gave his career a temporary rebound.

He's an Irish-American gangster who's between Duprez's and Freeman's age sparks an interest in both. He too undergoes a change in life as only a stretch in the joint might affect some. In many ways this is similar to the part he played in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

Freeman is the real revelation here. You won't find her in too many roles like this one.

James Dunn is way too old as a romantic partner for very young Monna Freeman, who is barely old enough to carry off her age and sophistication shifting role. Even in the 1940's I'll bet more than a few eyebrows were raised at the age inappropriateness; he looks almost old enough to be her grandfather. And June Duprez is too young to be the mother of a 20 year old girl; Duprez was 28 at the time.

Despite their age inappropriateness, all three are convincing in their acting. British Duprez does an excellent American accent. But the film's story is Hollywood moralistic nonsense - Catholic conservative, audience bait. And it suffers from having to adhere to Breen office censorship -- Ziggy's mother is obviously meant to be a prostitute and perhaps Ziggy as well, but they can't more than barely hint at that, and it weakens the story.

Also a minus - The Dunn character's stereotyical and theatrically phony Irish mother.

This is an odd film, coming as it does from Republic Pictures, a studio not noted for taking chances on serious psychological subjects. The film is inhibited by the censorship of the time and lack of real courage by Republic. The studio washed over the troubled upbringing and its obvious repercussions on the character of a young woman brought up by a slatternly mother. Mona Freeman, young as she was, is the best actor here. She is quite believable (most of time) despite the erratic and often improbable plotting. Great effort is made throughout the film to make the seedy characters who inhabit such a world likable and sympathetic. James Dunne, for example, is first introduced as a cunning crooked gangster, but, as he loves his corn beef and cabbage mom, he turns out okay. After being sent to prison for crimes we never learn about, he suddenly sets out to redeem himself. Why? Many of the characters are badly written, or badly acted. English actress, June Duprez has no idea what her tough lady dialogue means and is totally miscast. William Marshall, Mona's husband, is dreadful and not particularly attractive. He, too, seems to be reading lines he doesn't understand. Director Alfred Santell does a workman like job of staging an enormity of scenes with the usual Republic shooting schedule and budget, but the complexity of the relationships is beyond his modest talents. There was the possibility of a great movie here. Look at MILDRED PIERCE in the hands of Michael Curtiz, and imagine what a better director and superior cast might have done with this interesting human story.