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So Lou Lumenick, retired NY Post critic, tweeted this (his Twitter feed is fun for dredging up forgotten movies based on their NYC TV screenings back in the day):

If you could watch only one film before @filmstruck folds, I'd say it should be John Cromwell's fascinating and super-rare THE SILVER CORD (1933). I've waited 40 years to see this, since reading Howard Thompson's writeup in the 1970s in a list of movies not being shown on TV.

Based on a play by Sidney Howard (They Knew What They Wanted), which Laura Hope Crews, the future Aunt Pittypat in Gone With the Wind, had done on Broadway in 1926, The Silver Cord turns out to be a scorcher with two terrific parts for women and at least pretty good ones for the rest of the cast, one of those family arguments get more and more vicious things like August Osage County or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, though my wife went in a different direction with her comparison: Leave Her to Heaven.

Irene Dunne is a scientist (studying in Heidelberg under Gustav von Seyffertitz!), Joel McCrea is her new husband who is trying to make it as an architect. They get a chance to go to New York and pursue their careers there, and swing by the family home (a small New England town somewhere) for Dunne to finally meet Mom (Crews). The first one on one between Crews and one of her boys merely makes her seem a bit clingy and sad, but soon we see how manipulative she really is, trying to break up the younger one (Edward Linden) and the dancer (Frances Dee, who McCrea would marry after this film) he's engaged to.

For McCrea she has a more devious scheme, luring the pair to live in the small town and develop some property she has into houses. But we soon see there's a Freudian component as well to why she won't let her boys go, which Crews is not the least bit squeamish about emphasizing on screen. (Snuggling with Joel McCrea is a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.) McCrea, displaying the square fellow obliviousness that is used so well to comic effect in The Palm Beach Story, can't see what Crews is up to, but Dunne does—and knows she has to fight to the death for her marriage.

Yes, it's a filmed stage play, but the acting is so good, especially by Crews and Dunne (she tears into the final scenes like a detective solving the big case) and it's paced so well by Cromwell that being kept to a few sets of the house is more satisfying than not. The script is mostly excellent and has truth in it about families and marriage that hasn't aged out of relevance in all these years. At barely over an hour and ten minutes, it rips right along, don't miss it.

Previously in this series:
The Holly and the Ivy
The Stranger's Return
Carnival of Sinners
The Passing of the Third Floor Back
The Killer is Loose
The Kiss Before the Mirror
Vacation From Marriage
Uncle Silas
The Letter That Was Never Sent
Little Man, What Now?

My memory of this one is that Laura Hope Crews nearly steals the film. She was more often cast in comic, dithery roles but in this one she pure evil.

Watched this today on FilmStruck (sob); thanks for pointing out. Irene Dunne's character could almost have fallen back in time from today. I often found myself wondering, “When is she going to realize she's in a 1933 film?”

I first saw this when I was going through the RKO library at WCIX in Miami. Loved it. I have a beautiful C&C print. Crews was in the Broadway play.

Lou also brought up VILLAGE TALE, based on the book by Philip "State Fair" Stong. A very offbeat small town soaper with some shocking moments.

RKO, eh? I wonder when was the last time this was shown on TCM?

There's a five film anthology of Irene Dunne films available in Region 2 format on Amazon.uk. It's not cheap, but it's a nice anthology. It contains "The Silver Cord".


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bachelor-Apart ... rene+dunne

drednm wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 25, 2018 5:47 am

My memory of this one is that Laura Hope Crews nearly steals the film. She was more often cast in comic, dithery roles but in this one she pure evil.

"Pure evil" is exactly the term that came to my mind watching this one. After about five minutes I was in full-on hate mode. And then I had to wait another 45 or so before we got the big showdown with Irene.

What I found most interesting about this one is that Irene never seriously considers forfeiting her career. And in the end, she doesn't. That ends up at odds with some of the more celebrated "career women" pre-codes (e.g., FEMALE).

Watched over the holiday weekend, loved it. Dunne was fabulous as expected. Laura Hope Crewes really was marvelous as the harpy mother. Unsavory and quite disturbing and she ran with it.

My add on ending, Robert in eternal frustration shoots mother and dies in the chair. Irene wins Nobel for science and Joel is a stay at home dad. Puzzled I have no ending for poor Hester.