La vie privée du tribun

The character of Parnell has interested me ever since I read James Joyce's Ulysses. I caught this movie by accident when channel surfing and landed on TCM, the source of many old movie nuggets. "Parnell" brings us some first rate actors, from Clark Gable to Myrna Loy, Edmund Gwyn and Donald Crisp. The viewer sees the main outline of the controversy involving Charles Parnell and Kitty O'Shea and its impact on the Irish Free State bill. The movie is dressed up in melodrama with violin music to the strains of Irish ballads. This cloying treatment, not unusual in Hollywood, does not detract from the story of a great man and the overlooked merits of this film. Parnell brought the Irish factions together to achieve a significant breakthrough in his time and might have saved many troubles. Parnell was the stuff of greatness and his story has been enshrined in history and literature. We know that the struggle for Ireland continued beyond his life; still, his story reverberates. This movie gives a sense of the tragedy but the poor sound and grainy film are a bit of an irritation. Also, the choice of Clark Gable, Hollywood's rugged icon of the 1930's, for the role of Parnell, falls flat. This is unfortunate because the movie is far from a disaster. Nevertheless, I would like to see a film with a more complete story, with more character development and background. It would tell the epic tale of Parnell's achievements and the forces that shaped Ireland in the late nineteenth century. The British movie industry does those period movies very well. This movie gives us a taste of that history.

Parnell is not a well known old movie, but even at the time, it didn't go over well with audiences. It was such a box office bomb, Clark Gable vowed he'd never make another period piece again. We can all have a chuckle at his promise, since he was shortly afterwards cast as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, but it certainly explains why he didn't want to take that part.

Clark starred as Charles Parnell, an Irish politician at the end of the 1800s. As usual, he didn't put on any accent for the role. Neither did Myrna Loy, his leading lady. But why wasn't it Robert Montgomery or Franchot Tone, actors who did put on Irish accents for their movies? Clark and Myrna played love interests in seven movies, so they certainly had their chemistry practiced. In this one, she's an unhappily married woman, and despite the huge political risks to getting involved with her, Clark can't resist her. This was a true story, so if you're cringing and wondering why Clark couldn't put the good of the country ahead of a pretty face, just remember that the real Parnell couldn't either. Personally, I found the romance a little irritating, since so much was at stake. But that's what true love means!

In the supporting cast, you'll see lots of familiar faces, like Edna May Oliver, Edmund Gwenn, Donald Crisp, Alan Marshal, Billie Burke, and Donald Meek. But the biggest treat of all is to sit through a Clark Gable movie and not hear him shout. Perhaps Gable really did his research and wanted to give a good impression of Parnell, if he was soft spoken, or perhaps he just wanted to try a departure from his usual loud, shouting delivery. Whatever the case, he seemed like a totally different actor, and it was very nice to see him try a different acting style.

If one were to see the movie Captain Boycott and see Robert Donat in a brief cameo as Charles Stewart Parnell making a speech you would be seeing a far closer portrayal to the real Parnell then Clark Gable gave in this film. Myrna Loy wasn't too much better as Kitty O'Shea, both the leads looked like they had something else on their minds.

The real Charles Stewart Parnell was a great Irish patriot who by force of intellect and oratory rose to the head of the Irish party in the House of Commons. During the 1880s the members for Ireland in Parliament under Parnell's leadership held the balance of power between the Conservatives and Liberals. If the whole business with his affair with Mrs. O'Shea had not come to light, Ireland might very well have gotten it's own parliament and essentially home rule which was Parnell's goal. He accomplished this all the while clinging to his Protestant faith. The fact that Parnell was a Protestant was not mentioned at all in this film.

Also, the key to Parnell's downfall was his haughtiness. He was not an easy guy to like. He was a great Irish patriot, but he was also haughty and arrogant. When he was brought down by a back street affair come to light, even a lot of his allies weren't unhappy at his political demise.

Before the affair came to light, his enemies tried another gambit with some forged letters that purported to show Parnell's complicity in the assassinations of Lord Fredrick Cavendish and his secretary in Phoenix Park in Dublin in 1881. The trial scenes were the best in the film and it might have been a good film had they stuck to that of course with someone else playing Parnell. The best performance in the film is that of George Zucco who was Parnell's attorney, Sir Charles Russell. Running a close second in acting is Alan Marshal who plays Myrna Loy's husband, Captain O'Shea who thinks by pimping his wife to Parnell he can advance his own career.

Gable took ribbing for this film the rest of his life and even he admitted it laid an ostrich egg.

I watched Parnell and waited for the awfulness. It never happened. What may have thrown off audiences in 1937 is that this is a period piece with absolutely no action and lots of speechifying. I thought Clark Gable was good and believable in his role as Charles Stewart Parnell, Anglo Irish politician and champion of Irish home rule, but this was not what people expected when they went to the movies to see a Clark Gable film. I guess it would have been like seeing Johnny Weismuller on a marquee in the 1930's, buying a ticket, and finding out he is portraying Abraham Lincoln instead of Tarzan or a Tarzan like figure. Thus many people say this film was a case of miscasting in the star role. I think it was more a case of unexpected casting.

The film keeps moving with Parnell dealing with one problem after another. There's even a murder trial thrown in at the middle of the movie! Then there is the married Kitty O'Shea (Myrna Loy) as Parnell's love interest.I thought the romance built slowly and credibly, and the charisma between Gable and Loy is electric. Kitty is unhappily married to Willy O'Shea, who is a complete weasel with high political aspirations. How many husbands are so unpleasant that their wives would rather pay their expensive bills to keep them away from home? That's what Willy kept threatening - pay this or that bill or I'll simply have to move back in with you. It does make you wonder why they married in the first place.

One strange thing that the film did was have Billie Burke, who was 53 at the time, playing Clara, Kitty's rather flaky sister, when she was old enough to be Myrna Loy's mother and only one year younger than Edna May Oliver who plays Clara and Kitty's aunt Ben. Billie Burke had been playing matronly characters with grown children for some time, so making her up and dressing her up to be somebody in her 20's who didn't have a real place in the plot other than being Oliver's comic foil just seemed a little weird.

As usual with biopics, this film got some facts about Parnell wrong. He actually toured the American south with his brother in the 1870's, not places associated with the Irish Americans in the 19th century such as Boston and New York. His affair with Kitty O'Shea was not that innocent. He actually fathered three of her four children while she was still married to her first husband. I can see how for the sake of dramatic license and the production code MGM would just make them guilty of holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes for years and years.

Great performances all around, good production values, a plot that kept my interest, and great supporting characters who often starred in MGM's lesser films of the time - thus I'd say this film is probably a 6.5/10, but I had to give a whole number rating so I rounded up to 7. It certainly held my interest and made me curious enough to want to learn more about this part of Irish history of which I know so little, thus I consider it a success, not a failure.

I am an avid lover of the book THE FIFTY WORST FILMS by Harry Medved. It's brilliantly written and funny. However, a few times the book lists movies that are poor but really don't approach awfulness. This movie is one of them (along with THAT HAGEN GIRL and SWING YOUR LADY). While I will gladly admit that it is about Gable's worst film from the mid to late 1930s, it's certainly better than some movies he did in 1931 when he wasn't yet a star. Also, with so many bad films from Hollywood, this movie just seems poor--not bad. After all, even with a saccharine script, this movie STILL stars Myrna Loy and Clark Gable and how bad can a film be when it features these fine actors? Yes, it's true that Clark as Parnell is pretty wussy and unbelievable (and completely unlike Gable in other films, but I actually saw some merit, albeit little, in the film and just can't accept that it deserves a 1 or even a 2.