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IMDbPro

Tender Comrade

  • 1943
  • Approved
  • 1h 42m
IMDb RATING
6.2/10
1.1K
YOUR RATING
Ginger Rogers and Robert Ryan in Tender Comrade (1943)
DramaRomanceWar

Jo Jones, a young defense plant worker whose husband is in the military during World War II, shares a house with three other women in the same situation.Jo Jones, a young defense plant worker whose husband is in the military during World War II, shares a house with three other women in the same situation.Jo Jones, a young defense plant worker whose husband is in the military during World War II, shares a house with three other women in the same situation.

  • Director
    • Edward Dmytryk
  • Writer
    • Dalton Trumbo
  • Stars
    • Ginger Rogers
    • Robert Ryan
    • Ruth Hussey
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.2/10
    1.1K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Edward Dmytryk
    • Writer
      • Dalton Trumbo
    • Stars
      • Ginger Rogers
      • Robert Ryan
      • Ruth Hussey
    • 30User reviews
    • 7Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 4 wins total

    Photos20

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    Top cast20

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    Ginger Rogers
    Ginger Rogers
    • Jo Jones
    Robert Ryan
    Robert Ryan
    • Chris Jones
    Ruth Hussey
    Ruth Hussey
    • Barbara Thomas
    Patricia Collinge
    Patricia Collinge
    • Helen Stacey
    Mady Christians
    Mady Christians
    • Manya Lodge
    Kim Hunter
    Kim Hunter
    • Doris Dumbrowski
    Jane Darwell
    Jane Darwell
    • Mrs. Henderson
    Richard Martin
    Richard Martin
    • Mike Dumbrowski
    Robert Anderson
    • Chris Jones as a boy
    • (uncredited)
    Patti Brill
    Patti Brill
    • Western Union Girl
    • (uncredited)
    Tom Burton
    • Minor Role
    • (uncredited)
    Donald Davis
    • Boy
    • (uncredited)
    Jane Farrar
    Jane Farrar
    • Minor Role
    • (uncredited)
    Edward Fielding
    Edward Fielding
    • Doctor
    • (uncredited)
    Mary Forbes
    Mary Forbes
    • Mrs. Flanagan - Jo's Mother
    • (uncredited)
    Richard Gaines
    Richard Gaines
    • Waldo Pierson
    • (uncredited)
    Euline Martin
    • Baby
    • (uncredited)
    Freddie Mercer
    • Boy
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Edward Dmytryk
    • Writer
      • Dalton Trumbo
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews30

    6.21K
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    Featured reviews

    7vincem41

    Good at showing the daily problems to overcome on the home front

    I found it an interesting movie because I was just old enough to be aware of what was what during the war years. Rationing, shortages, worrying about husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, etc. who were overseas fighting. It may seem "hokey" or outdated to those under thirty or forty, but it's fairly representative of what life was like. I agree with a previous commentator - Dalton Trumbo is/was a vastly over-rated writer, in fact if it hadn't been for the fact that he was "black-listed" I doubt if he would be remembered, let alone lionized as he is today. A classic case of creating a martyr. He's heavy handed and lacks subtlety. His mediocre writing is usually compensated for by the talent of the players or directors. View it with a mindset that allows for the ethos of the period and I think you will find it entertaining. Ginger Rogers is almost always terrific, and this movie is no exception.
    timmauk

    a nice little movie

    Ok, this movie IS dated but so were most of the films made during the WWII. This is not a major earthshaking film, just a nice little movie. Even if it gets a little preachy.

    Ginger Rogers is more muted in this role, not really one of her strongest performances, but she is good. Robert Ryan, her husband in the film, is actually playing a NICE guy here. This film also includes Ruth Hussey, Kim Hunter, Patricia Collinge and Jane Darnell. They are never really used to a great advantage here.

    The story is simple enough. These women were left behind by their men who went of to war. They move in together to share expenses and responsibility. They try to run the house democratically but run into problems. If you are looking for a nice little movie to watch, this can be that movie. I do have this in my video collection and have watched it about 3 times.
    8bkoganbing

    20% of the Hollywood Ten

    I think it was sad that Ginger Rogers spent so much time trashing this movie Tender Comrade over politics. It contains one of her best performances.

    Rogers was a member in good standing of Hollywood's right wing and Tender Comrade came under the scrutiny of the House Un-American Activities Committee. With writer Dalton Trumbo and director Edward Dmytryk two of the Hollywood Ten involved it had a star place in the proceedings.

    With the word 'comrade' in the title that's if you'll pardon the pun a red flag in front of these bulls. I mean isn't that what Communists call each other? And the plot concerning four Rosie the Riveteer types teaming up to buy a house and share expenses for the duration, clearly Communist and subverting the American ideal of rugged individualism. And dialog talking about a more unselfish world. This bares investigation.

    Ginger, along with other marrieds Ruth Hussey, Patricia Collinge, and Kim Hunter all decide to live together and it seems like a practical decision. They make another one when since they're all doing factory work and come home bone tired they pool part of their salaries and hire a live-in housekeeper Mady Christians. This woman is a refugee from Germany and she provides some valuable insights into the foe their husbands are fighting.

    Tender Comrade like so many films of the WW2 era talked a lot about building a better world and God knows what is wrong with that? It turned out to be a dream, but God help us if we ever have a world where no one dreams of making it better.

    We also have some flashback scenes that are done well with Ginger and her husband Robert Ryan in the service. They show a typical Mr.&Mrs. Young America at the time and they had a universal identification.

    Kim Hunter's husband comes home on leave and he's played by Richard Martin, one of the few times you will see him on film not playing Chit Jose Gonzalez Bustamante Rafferty. Treasure this film for that alone. And also for Ginger Rogers fine and eloquent soliliquy at the end.

    It wasn't only Dmytryk and Trumbo who got blacklisted. So did Kim Hunter, Patricia Collinge, and Mady Christians. Lot of political casualties came out of this very fine film about the WW2 homefront.
    8morrisonhimself

    Great cast overcomes mediocre script

    Ginger Rogers was a much better actress than Dalton Trumbo was a writer (and she had much prettier legs).

    In fact, in "Tender Comrade," Trumbo presents us with a puzzle: How could a writer responsible for so much hokey, amateurish dialogue (noted by other reviewers) ever get a reputation as being a great or even a good writer? I admit there were two bright spots in "Tender Comrade" that deserve appreciation for the writer: near the beginning, when two strangers comfort each other as their loved ones depart for the war, and when one character tells another how her marriage "proposal" came about.

    Trumbo, though, being Trumbo later has a silly bit when Jo refers to the socialist plan the group adopts ("from each according to her ability …") as "democracy," further demonstrating his confusing of two different and distinct applications as the same.

    "Democracy" is a more or less political term describing how leaders are chosen (if, for some reason, anyone wants leaders), and "socialism" is a more or less economic term and more or less philosophical term describing how material goods are more or less shared – distributed, anyway. ("Socialism" means government ownership of the means of production, to be more pedantic.) There was nothing wrong with the democratically decided idea of voluntary communalism among the housemates, but if a viewer knows Trumbo's predilection for collectivism – at least for others, though not so much for himself – the whole scene is discomfiting.

    (An excellent book that portrays Trumbo and others, and shows the dichotomy between what they preached, including sometimes in their scripts, and how they lived is "Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s" by Lloyd Billingsley. It is probably the best book yet on that era. Read especially about Trumbo and his mansion and the lavish parties he loved to throw, even during the times the soldiers were dying.)

    Jo's last monologue went on for too long, and really didn't say much – it was apparently another failed attempt by Trumbo at being profound and dramatic.

    But Ginger Rogers said a lot, even with Trumbo's words. She was a much, much better actress than she seems to be generally regarded. She was much, much more than a great dancer.

    With all my complaints about Trumbo, his moronic politics, the lame plot, and his poor writing, still this is a pretty good movie.

    It brings back, though not especially well, a particular time in American history.

    One of the great ironies of that era: Trumbo waxed indignant about the Nazis and the war they instigated. Yet it is the politics of Trumbo and the other collectivists, Nazis and Communists and other kinds of socialists and fascists, that together created the climate that allowed the unmitigated horrors of World War II.

    The collectivist notions that people are not sovereign individuals but are cogs in the machinery of the state, that they must obey their masters, that they must cheerfully march off to war, to kill and/or be killed, that led to the tens of millions of deaths.

    Trumbo must share the blame for that evil. He was a vehement proponent of that vicious nonsense.

    Still, the cast overcomes the weaknesses of the script. If you watch it on Turner Classic Movies, ignore Robert Osborne's ignorant introduction and closing comments, and concentrate on the people, on their concerns and their efforts at overcoming adversity, on how they deal with their menfolks' being in harm's way, on their daily difficulties, including rationing.

    "Tender Comrade" is worth watching.
    7AlsExGal

    Hard to believe anybody could consider this subversive...

    ... but it was part of what got director Edward Dmytryk and writer Dalton Trumbo in trouble with HUAC in the early 50s when this film was considered Communist propaganda.

    Four war wives who work in a munitions plant decide that if they pool their salaries and resources that instead of four individual run down rooms for rent that they can rent one spacious house with a bedroom for each, a kitchen, a living room, and a housekeeper. They sell one of the two cars they have between them and use the money to fix up the one remaining car and share it. Apparently this is Communism. Let's just ignore the fact that, at the time, movies were being made that were loaded with pro Russian propaganda because the Americans needed the Russians in the war effort. That was then this is now, as they say.

    Other than that, it treads pretty traditional wartime material. One wife (Ruth Hussey) was a bit of a good time girl before the war and rather resents the fact that her good-time husband joined the navy before Pearl Harbor even happened. Another (Kim Hunter) got married on the spur of the moment and had to see her husband off that afternoon. Another (Patricia Collinge) has both a son and a husband in the war.

    The central figure, though, is war wife Jo Jones (Ginger Rogers), and most of the film is about her relationship with her soldier/husband Chris (Robert Ryan) before the war as she flashes back to various scenes from their marriage. This part of the film uses a strange device. Whenever there is a scene in which Jo reminisces about Chris, the scene switches to a shot of the two of them in the distance, holding hands with clouds surrounding them, like they are in heaven, before launching into the flashback.

    This gets pretty sentimental at times, and Ginger verges on hamming it up, but it did hold my interest for the rather long running time and is a splendid time capsule of the war years.

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      This film was introduced as evidence when director Edward Dmytryk and writer Dalton Trumbo were hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating them on suspicion of being Communists. Despite the film's many flag-waving speeches, the communal living arrangements of the ladies in the film was cited as evidence of how Dmytryk and Trumbo attempted to brainwash unsuspecting American moviegoers with Communist propaganda. As even more damning evidence, there was the use of the word "Comrade" in the title.
    • Goofs
      When Chris comes around the hanging laundry in Jo's flashback, we hear the end of his whistling "You Made Me Love You," but his face is totally relaxed, and clearly not that of a person who is whistling.
    • Quotes

      Jo Jones: We're going to pool all of our salaries and we'll pay the rent, take care of the expenses of the house, and what's left over, we'll split five ways. You see, we're running this joint like a democracy!

      Manya Lodge: Like a democracy! Oh, that's good! That's good. Once, in Germany, we had a democracy. But we...

      Helen Stacey: You lost it.

      Manya Lodge: Nein. We did not lose it. We let it be murdered - like a little child.

    • Crazy credits
      TO MY WIFE - Teacher, Tender Comrade Wife, A fellow-farer true through life, Heart-whole and soul-free, The August Father, Gave to me. Robert Louis Stevenson
    • Connections
      Featured in Hollywood the Golden Years: The RKO Story: Dark Victory (1987)
    • Soundtracks
      Symphony No. 40 in G minor K. 550
      (1788) (uncredited)

      Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

      First movement played on the radio in the opening scene

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • June 1944 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • German
    • Also known as
      • Kärlekskamrater
    • Filming locations
      • RKO Studios - 780 N. Gower Street, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA(Studio)
    • Production company
      • RKO Radio Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 42 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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