Home Town Story

It was fun watching Alan Hale Jr. try to make time with no nonsense secretary Marilyn Monroe. But I couldn't get past the ridiculous casting of a man in his mid to late 30 with a 10 year old sister. He looked closer to his mom's age!

Hometown Story, a rather cheaply made film, even for a B picture and especially since it comes from MGM, is stalwart Republican Louis B. Mayer's defense of the free enterprise system. Not that he hadn't done it before, one of the most rightwing films ever made came out of his studio a decade earlier with Boom Town. But that film was a big production with some heavy duty name players in it. This one was made with frugality in mind.

Jeffrey Lynn is our star who has returned to his hometown in Hometown Story a defeated State Senator, defeated by Hugh Beaumont grandson of Donald Crisp who is the biggest employer in the area. Lynn takes over the newspaper and decides to use it to gain support for a comeback bid. And who to go after but the biggest target around.

And if you can't find an issue, create one. Lynn attacks what he labels the obscene profits of Crisp's firm and others like it. That sends Crisp into Lynn's office with a theory of capitalism and a defense of his business practices.

At first people might dismiss this film because in this day and age we now see what corporations like Enron and investment banks like Goldman-Sachs have done. But I would quote no less than Martin Sheen from Wall Street who says there is a great deal of difference between speculators like Michael Douglas and businessmen like Crisp who started the business and put their work and sweat into it.

Of course it would be interesting 60 years later to see if that Hometown Story now includes said firm moving to a foreign country or to some state with right to work laws and no environmental regulations. It's a complicated business with no easy answers.

Hometown Story would be gathering dust in a tin can at MGM's vaults if it weren't for the fact that Marilyn Monroe has a small role as a secretary at Lynn's newspaper. She's not Lynn's love interest, that's reserved for Marjorie Reynolds. But she does send Lynn's best friend and star reporter Alan Hale into a tizzy. The future skipper of the USS Minow has his hormones in overdrive.

Economics is not an easy subject for films and Hometown Story will not provide any answers. But it's pleasant enough viewing.

This certainly has to be rated as one of the least interesting movies I've ever seen. I don't think I would go as far as to call it bad - simply dull would be a better word for it. It features passable performances from most of the leads (including a limited role for Marilyn Monroe as a sexy secretary with only a handful of lines) but aside from some suspense about the fate of little Katie in the last 20 minutes or so there really wasn't much here to hold my attention.

The movie starred Jeffrey Lynn as Blake Washburn - a one term state senator who's defeated for re-election and can't let it go. In fact he's the poster boy for sore losers, ready to pick fights with anybody who brings his defeat up, and convinced that the people were tricked into voting for his opponent. Frankly, he was a thoroughly unlikable character. Returning to his hometown, he uses his new position as editor of the family-run newspaper to criticize the man who beat him and to take on a variety of crusades, most notably against excess corporate profits. In that sense, the movie perhaps had some potential to provide a degree of social analysis, except that there was always question as to whether Washburn really cared about these issues, or whether he was simply using the paper as a platform to launch another election bid. In the end, the movie actually becomes a celebration of the system, as Washburn learns why profits are necessary, and how a company's profits benefit us all.

I found this most interesting for the very early look at Monroe, as well as for a look at a not bad piece of work from a young Alan Hale, Jr., who I know best as the Skipper from "Gilligan's Island." One thing really made me curious - how could Lynn play the brother of young Katie, played by Melinda Plowman, who got a few years as a bit player out of an acting career? Lynn would have been 42 when this was made, Plowman about 10. The family relationship was not at all believable. 4/10

A bit corny in its attempt to show how capitalism works when it isn't corrupted by heartless unsavory and greedy corporate criminals.

"Hometown Story" has to do with defeated local state senator Blake Washburn, Jeffrey Lynn, who's so embittered over his being turned out of office that after going back to his old job as editor of the Fairfax Herald decides to become a crusader against corporate corruption. Which in reality is attacking his opponents the new state senator McFarland, who defeated him, fathers business.

A angry young man with a chip on his shoulder Blake gets so involved in his anti-capitalistic crusade against old man John McFarland, Donald Crisp, over his sons defeat of him in the state elections that he completely overlooks the fact that the plant that he owns is the cleanest most environment-friendly and best run in the state. This make a now frustrated Blake turns his guns, or editorial, against every big business in the country who makes a profit regardless if it's done honestly or not! Trying on Blake's part to create a peoples revolution against big business/capitalism. This mindless action by Blake in 1951, at the hight of the Cold War, could well have had him both arrested and tried by the FBI and US Justice Department for treason!

Blake even though a likable guy is so obsessed with getting re-elected that he turns everyone who knows him like his fiancée Janice and best fiend reporter Slim Haskins, Marjorie Reynolds & Alan Hale Jr, against him. This leads Slim to almost end up almost punching him out in a confrontation he has with Balke in his office.

It takes a conversation that Blake has with John McFarland to fills the hot-headed editor in with what capitalism did in making America the great country that it is today. Later the near tragic accident that almost killed Blake's sister Kathy, Melinda Portman, and McFarland rescue of her that turned him in his negative ideas of capitalism around. Kathy trapped in a coal mine collapse, together with her new puppy Rags, painfully showed Blake the light as the forces of capitalism and the free market quickly and efficiently swung into action.

Old man, and business tycoon, McFarland using all the earth moving equipment that he had at his disposal ended up saving little Kathy's and her dogs life. In the end Blake now finally saw what capitalism had to offer the common working man and woman, and it was good. This all caused Blake to changed his mind as he became the biggest supporter of the capitalist system in the state. Rewriting and reediting all the bad things and press that ever said or wrote about big business making big bucks Blake now sees how important the benefits of capitalism is for the average working man and woman as well. Now with Blakes support all those big bucks will in the end help those, like his sister Kathy, who at first didn't seem to get, or benefit from, them. A bit condescending for my tastes in how great it is for corporations to make obscene profits which, we could only hope, in return helps all of us.

P.S Look for a young and scintillating Marilyn Monroe in the film in a bit part as sexy and unavailable, to at least the overly friendly Slim Haskins, Iris Martin. Iris' tight fitting sweaters are enough to make me want to get a job at the Fairfax Herald regardless of what I'll be paid in wages just so I can even get lucky enough to buy Marilyn a cup of coffee and have a chance to talk to her.

"Home Town Story" is a frustrating B-movie from MGM. It has a few excellent story ideas but manages to execute them quite poorly. Despite this, it is watchable.

Jeffrey Lynn plays Blake Washburn--an ex-senator with a serious chip on his shoulder. He's mad he lost the re-election and is bent on punishing the guy responsible. So, as the new editor of a newspaper, he's bent on attacking the MacFarland family business--because the factory owner's son beat Washburn in the election! If Washburn sounds like a petty jerk, then you are correct. In addition to using the paper for his personal vendetta, he seriously ignores his incredibly long-suffering fiancé. Therein lies much of the problem with the film--the main character is unlikable and you really want a piano to fall on his head (or some equally horrid accident). Additionally, the film has a very odd message about economics and capitalism that COULD have been excellent had the message not been hammered home so poorly. Overall, despite the MGM glitz and a few good actors (I like the Washburn kid), it's a film that needed more time to allow the plot to move realistically instead of being so rushed and contrived.