#louis bromfield

[lauramariescorner]

[eugenesisland]

Took a road trip from Tiffin to Malabar Farm outside of Mansfield with the 401 Jeep Brigade (facebook group) last Saturday.  The highlight of the trip was discovering this ‘46 CJ2A napping in the carriage house.  

[bacallbazaar]

Mansfield, OH (May 21, 1945): Lauren Bacall tosses her bouquet at her wedding reception with new husband, Humphrey Bogart, at the home of novelist Louis Bromfield.  

Photo By: Ed Clark

[universitybookstore]

It was not recklessness when you risked nothing, when what you did made no difference to anyone, not even to yourself.

novelist Louis Bromfield, born December 27, 1896.

[rexparker]

Hay there

[yesterdaysprint]

The Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1947

[bobonbooks]

Review: Early Autumn Olivia Pentland, in a loveless marriage in a rich old family, faces choices as the early autumn approaches when she turns 40....

Review: Early Autumn

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Mrs. Parkington

Tay Garnett’s MRS. PARKINGTON (1944, TCM, HBO Max) is easy to spot as an MGM movie. It has the studio’s usual lushly detailed sets and costumes; a supporting cast featuring contract players Gladys Cooper, Agnes Moorehead, Edward Arnold, Frances Rafferty, Tom Drake and Selena Royle; and a star team that wouldn’t have fit in at any other studio. The popularity of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon may seem a mystery to contemporary audiences. Though not unskilled as actors, there’s a stiffness about them at times that borders on the mummified. They could have moments of vigor —she could be feisty and he waggish — but there’s always a little dullness around the edges. Part of that problem was the studio’s typing them as the noble couple. William Powell and Myrna Loy got to be sophisticated, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow earthy, and Tracy and Hepburn sexily contentious. But Garson and Pidgeon were almost relentlessly noble.

At least in MRS. PARKINGTON, they get moments where they seem to be having fun. Garson has more of them. The film opens with her as an 80-year-old woman, a boarding house maid turned society doyenne, and she seems to be having a blast delivering zingers and sidelong glances at her grown children and grandchildren. The framing story involves a grandson-in-law who’s been running the family investment company and dipping into the till. The government is on his tail, and if he can’t make good what he’s stolen, which will deplete the family’s fortune, he’s headed for jail. This triggers a series of flashbacks in which Garson remembers her courtship by the wealthy Major Parkington (Pidgeon), her indoctrination into society by his former mistress (Moorehead) and other incidents in their lives that made her the fiercely independent, highly principled woman she is at 80. Today it reads as a rehearsal for THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN, and it’s a pity the script (from Louis Bromfield’s hit novel), didn’t put Garson on the Titanic to liven things up.

Instead, the real life in the picture comes from the supporting cast. In the first scenes, set in the characters’ present, Cooper storms in as Garson’s bitter, alcoholic daughter. It’s a very different role from her usual image of steely British fortitude (MGM wasn’t as invested in branding their supporting players as in their stars), and she plays it to the hilt. Once the flashbacks get rolling, it’s up to Moorehead to keep the ball in the air, and she delivers an expertly layered, often comic performance as the sophisticated Baroness Conti, who, like Garson’s character, started out as a serving girl. Her presence even pushes Garson to something more lifelike, though when the star is called upon to suffer, she resorts to posturing, leaving Moorehead to do all the real acting. There’s also a lovely cameo by Cecil Kellaway as Edward, Prince of Wales, who serves as a cupid ex machina when the leads are experiencing marital problems.

Oddly enough, there’s something subversive about all this, or maybe it just seems so today. When Pidgeon decides to take on New York society after a snub, he derides them for not having worked to earn their wealth, as he had. The film’s plot validates that position by depicting the Parkingtons’ children as a vile and venal lot. It’s an attack on inherited wealth that probably appealed to a self-made man like studio head Louis B. Mayer. But today it seems a reference to our current gilded age, with people who were born into almost obscene fortunes hailed as if they were great thinkers. Who’d have thought MGM, that bastion of conservatism, would make a movie that now reads as a rallying cry for the “No Kings” movement. Or it might if it weren’t too overall stodgy to be a rallying cry for anything.