Young Man with Ideas

When the film begins, Max and Julie Webster (Glenn Ford and Ruth Roman) are living in Montana. Max is a meek lawyer who doesn't get the respect his wife thinks he deserves. When they go to a very important meeting with Max's boss to celebrate a case they just won, Julie gets drunk and tells off Max's boss!! The next day, Julie nags poor Max into going in to the boss and instead of apologizing insists that he should ask for a raise. Not surprisingly, Max is fired.

The wife then insists that they should move to California and this means not only relocating them but forcing poor old Max to take the California Bar exam in order to practice there. Not only that, he doesn't have a job...though he is offered one as a bill collector. Naturally this job is all wrong for Max since he's so meek, but when the wife berates him for being so weak, he takes the job. The wife also nearly gets Max killed due to comments she makes to a stranger over the phone. What's next? Well, two other women end up throwing themselves at Max and you figure sooner or later he's going to up and leave Julie...or bust her in the kisser! But then,...there are the kids to consider.

This films has funny moments but the longer I watched it, the more the film annoyed me. While Max certainly should learn to speak up for himself, the writer made Julie too difficult to like and, well, a tad nasty. I found that as the film progressed, I wanted Max to leave her...and that made the film a comedy that simply stopped being funny. But you also know that in the 1950s no matter what she did and how hateful she acted, by the end of the film they'd be back together even if Max did leave her. I just wanted to see Max take the kids, move back to Montana and leave Julie to turn tricks or sell organs in order to survive...or something of the sort. I also think it was a serious mistake to make Max so meek and mild...yet occasionally, and inexplicably, a crazed madman who beats the crap out of thugs....none of which is really funny. The sum total of all this was tiresome and could easily have been funnier.

Sometimes a lackluster script or bad direction is impossible for a cast to overcome. In this case, it feels like the writing indeed lacks luster-perhaps because two writers are credited.

When the New York Times reviewed the film, on its release, the critic hailed the writing and direction, but called the cast "comparatively second-flight". By today's standards, Glenn Ford, Ruth Roman and Nina Foch are considered first-rate, and they do seem to have a handle on the story. But I still allege that the story itself is flawed.

Ford plays Maxwell Webster, a Montana attorney with a misguided wife (Ruth Roman), who pushes him to get ahead. She is the one with the ideas. Maxwell is always muttering apologies and trying to make people like him. It's a role better suited to Wally Cox. But Ford does his best.

And so does Nina Foch as a sexy candidate for the bar who inexplicably latches onto him like a leech. And so does Denise Darcel as an exotic bombshell who Maxwell tries to collect from when he joins a debt collection firm. Each of these actors is fun to watch individually, but when their characters are forced to interact in this ill-fitting comedy, the effect is annoying.

Young Man With Ideas has Glenn Ford as a young very junior attorney at a law firm in some small Montana town who's not the most forceful fellow around. With a wife and three kids, he can't afford to be. Wife Ruth Roman sees something more in him and convinces him to be more assertive. Ford decides to move the family to Los Angeles where he can work and study to pass the California bar.

The rest of the film is the trials and tribulations they have in Los Angeles, some comic, some serious. Ford shakes off some of his inhibitions, not always in constructive ways.

Glenn Ford is one of the easiest to take actors around and his films reflect that. He's got the art of underplaying down to a science. and Young Man With Ideas is a great example of that.

Look for good supporting performances here, especially from Nina Foch, as a fellow aspiring lawyer, Denise Darcel as a nightclub entertainer, Rith Roman as the wife and Sheldon Leonard as a bookie.

By the way Foch gets Ford a job in a collection agency she works for and some of the film's best moments are from the mild mannered Ford working there.

It was the early 1950s, when a lot of young couples were moving to California in what has since been called "The Great Migration." It seemed to be a land of opportunity.

Glenn Ford is a young attorney who's doing fairly well at a Montana law firm, but who's clearly propping up some of the partners. His wife (Ruth Roman) sees his talents going to waste, and at dinner one night, having had a few drinks, she tells off her husband's bosses. All is more or less forgiven, but then she urges him to assert himself, one thing leads to another, and they decide to try L. A.

Arriving in California, they find that the home they had wired ahead to rent is unavailable. They end up in a rather seedy bungalow court, with a lot of telephones, because it's a former bookie joint. This figures in a whole series of misunderstandings, that should be funny (and occasionally, dangerous). And gets the couple involved with gangsters.

Meanwhile Glenn has been cramming for the California bar, along with law student Nina Foch, who gets him a job in the collection agency where she works to support herself. Glenn is not exactly the type to go after deadbeats. He even ends up helping out an aspiring French singer played by Denise Darcel. So now he has three attractive women in his life.

Lovely Ruth Roman is fine, in a change-of-pace comedy role, but Jean Arthur she's not. Darcel is cute and sexy, Foch is charming and attractive, and gives possibly the best performance in the movie. Ford is a good actor who sometimes overdid the shambling-mumbling-bashful routine, as he does here.

The final scenes give Glenn's character, Max, a chance to show off his legal skills in a courtroom, and it all ends happily.

Unfortunately, film is slightly contrived. I found myself wishing it had been simpler. Focusing more on how a young married couple adjusts to a new life in Southern California. In a more realistic manner.

Imagine, if you will, a Billy Wilder film where the sharp, cynical humor has been replaced by flaccid, family sit com and you have some idea of this dreary offering from Mitchell Leisen just as his career was starting to slouch toward its dull denouement. Not helping is a cast of good dramatic actors who are hopelessly adrift in comedy. Glenn Ford is way too strong to play the befuddled, nerdish title role and Ruth Roman's attempt at a cute, perky, fifties housewife pretty much falls flat. As does Nina Foch in the temptress role. As for Denise Darcell, well, she's not even a good dramatic actress, let alone funny. Perhaps if scenarist Arthur Sheekman had given these players some lines that are halfway risible things may have been better but Sheekman, who did such a great job adapting "Some Came Running", is also an odd choice when you're dealing with light fare. Solid C.