Le lys du ruisseau

After Ginger Rogers scored so well in a serious drama like Stage Door, the brass there were less reluctant to give her substantial parts. Ginger gives a great performance in Primrose Path, a good lead into what would be her Oscar winner with Kitty Foyle that same year.

The play by Robert Buckner and Walter Hart is based on a most steamy novel February Hill by Victoria Lincoln. February Hill was apparently the God's Little Acre of its day, it's steamy sex scenes had to be toned down considerably for the stage and even more so for the Code driven cinema of 1940. The novel and play were set in my area of the country, Buffalo and later out near Lake Canandaigua which is a considerable distance away.

In toning down the sex the screenwriters also switched the location to Northern California and with that making Primrose Path look a whole lot like John Steinbeck's work and characters. But no matter how you slice it, no denying that Ginger's white trash family make their living with prostitution, a low class version of Leslie Caron's family in Gigi.

Ginger thinks there's something better out there and her mother Marjorie Rambeau encourages her in that. She meets up with a nice, low key owner of a gas station and greasy spoon restaurant down the road in Joel McCrea. He's better than some of the low life men who her mother and grandmother would you believe consort with. He's also a lot better package than her own father, the alcoholic Miles Mander.

Primrose Path doesn't age well for today, it's a case of the Code seriously compromising the nature of the material. If it were remade today we'd see a more frank version. The players do fine with their roles and Marjorie Rambeau got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but lost to Jane Darwell for The Grapes Of Wrath.

Try and think of who you might cast in a remake today of Primrose Path. I could see Brendan Fraser in Joel McCrea's part myself.

It was fun seeing Virginia McMath a.k.a.Ginger Rogers at age 29. As I watched this film on Turner Classic Movies I saw a resemblance and body language very much like Doris Day's. Bubbly!! I found the film interesting because here Hollywood was, back in 1940, handling the theme of prostitution which is handled quite differently today. I'd say in 1940 it was done tastefully compared to the trash we see today.

Joel McCrea was the same mild mannered, easy going type that made him famous while the film was stolen by meddlesome witchy Queenie Vassar playing Ginger's maternal grandmother and Miles Mander playing Ginger's highly intelligent has-been drunk father once well acquainted with Greek philosophy.

Joel McCrea and Ginger Rogers did some of their best work in this picture. The story is a great one, and it was well executed. It should have made the list of 100 greatest American films, but there are flaws. Two of the secondary character are caricatures - the grandmother and the little sister were overplayed. The father, while perhaps realistic, came off as a melodramatic, sick joke. The coverage of one of the main themes, prostitution, was handled too graphically for 1940's audiences and too "victorianly" for modern audiences. But these are really minor complaints. I think Ginger Rogers did a great job, and should have gotten an academy award. When I first watched it, before I found out when the movie was made, I thought it must have been very early, say 1933, because she was very convincing as an apparent teenager - say a 19 year old. I should have realized the movie was not that old, as the direction, cinematography, and other secondary production aspects were much better, definitely in the "Citizen Kane" ranks. And after all, Ginger was very good at playing women a lot younger than she (see "The Major and the Minor"). Joel McCrea was also excellent, showing again that if he would have resisted his urges to play cowboys he could have developed a reputation as one of the greatest American film stars (see "Foreign Correspondent"). I am happy to see that IMDb users rate this film above 6.0, but I think it is much better than that.

"Primrose Path," directed by a famous drunkard, is the tale of a family made dysfunctional by a drunkard. Director Gregory LaCava knew his subject down to his fingertips; in her memoirs Ginger Rogers, star of the film, describes LaCava on the set, holding an ever-present tea cup filled with gin. Here he embarks on a profound meditation of relationships, and of evil, and of good. This 1940 production has been largely dismissed by critics. They are nearly unanimous in their gross failure to grasp La Cava's stroke of genius.

The characters circle each other and swirl together and apart to paint a vignette of a thoroughly wrecked family, finely brushed by actors compelled by LaCava to perform at a very high level.

Miles Mander, as Homer Adams, gives a masterful performance as an intellectual lost to the bottle. His jerky movements reveal a bandy-legged drunkard who spends his life in his bedroom scribbling about Ancient Greece or prostrate upon his bed in a stupor, muscles atrophied and willpower shattered. He has abdicated his role as head of the family to his mother-in-law and bitterly resents his own weakness.

In what is surely one of the most vile creatures ever committed to film, Queenie Vassar portrays this de facto matriarch, a scathing, baleful old prostitute who works relentlessly towards her goal; to corrupt her daughter and her grand-daughters into depravity - to follow her down the Primrose Path.

Her daughter Mamie, played by Marjorie Rambeau, trapped in a hopeless marriage to a drunkard, has succumbed to Grandma's demands and provides for the family the only way she can. She looks at the world with weary, defeated eyes, and with a wisdom that can be obtained in no other way. The wide difference in ages between Mamie's two daughters suggests a scandal. Homer's outrage at his wife's behavior only fuels his alcoholism. Mamie is a classic enabler. She provides the money for the drink he uses to put out the fires of his scalding shame, by cavorting with other men. All the while Grandma looms, a harpy stooping to gnaw and rip at the prostrate institution of the family.

Grandma's deceit and lies pervade the atmosphere of the hovel and the granddaughters both learn at her knee how to lie and to deceive. The younger girl, knowing only the toxic culture of her family, is raised in Grandma's image and there seems little hope in her future. The older granddaughter, Ellie May Adams played by Ginger Rogers, has had a sadly neglected upbringing. Yet she clearly has a strong character and a knowledge of another kind of household - perhaps reflecting the Adams' life before they descended into depravity.

But Ellie May is not immune to the effects of her dysfunctional family. When she escapes Primrose Hill for the coast on an expedition to gather clams, she meets Ed Wallace, played by Joel McCrea. Ed is something new in Ellie's little circle. He isn't rich, but he's clearly honorable and hard working. There is an air of confidence and life about him, of hope. Ellie May promptly shows that she has learned a great deal from Grandma in the ways of lying and deceit. She has considerable abilities for manipulation and co-dependence, but at the same time we see a haunting hunger in her, for human warmth and honesty. The way she manipulates Ed while at the same time showing a sensitive and simple and honest love for him and his Uncle draws the viewer into her personality and her world.

The dialect heard in this film is all but extinct today, but it is a perfect example of the pot pourri of languages of the Dust Bowl Midwest, South, and West all driven together in the vanished California of the Great Depression. To hear this dialect, listen to interviews of Woody Guthrie, or to very early Merle Haggard. Rogers knew all those regions, had lived in them, and breathed in these dialects during her years in vaudeville. Ginger's portrayal of Ellie May Adams reveals one of the most complex characters in film.

There is a deep understanding of character in the performances of Ginger Rogers. Watch the unsure, hesitant, naive Ellie May bravely entering the Blue Bell to clumsily strut for Joel McCrea, and compare her to the sheer rock star charisma of Ginger Rogers working the burlesque catwalk as Lilly Linda in "Upperworld," or again with the elegant and stylish women of "Top Hat" or "Gay Divorcee".

Yet there is more here to tell than simply to describe the masterpiece of a gin-soaked genius, or one of the greatest performances of one of the greatest actresses.

With this film, Ginger Rogers - and her studio, putting it all on the line for her - took the biggest career risk of any major actor in the entire Golden Era of Hollywood. No other actor at the peak of their stardom ever took on such a role, and no other top actor moved so far out of their established screen persona. Certainly no studio in the era of block-booking ever put their greatest star in a role like Ellie May Adams. This was truly risk-taking for stakes and believing in your star.

Arguably Rogers reached the summit of her career with this astonishing tone poem of deceit, despair, and the redemption of love.

Joel McCrea & Ginger Rogers star in this tale of a romance from across the tracks. Rogers lives in a ramshackle home populated by a ramshackle family who's matriarch is a lady of the night & the patriarch is a souse. When she meets McCrea, who is a go-getter working at a gas station slash hash-house, she thinks her financial woes are over & soon marries him but when the truth of Rogers' family come to bear, McCrea feels trapped & betrayed & acts accordingly (at least he thinks so). Mixing humor, pathos & romance in what could've been an unsavory package, this film finds the right note for the telling.