Year by Year: Films Sampler

A chronological selection of films from the forties.

Linda Darnell and Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro

1940: The Grapes of Wrath, a realistic film about the Great Depression, makes a huge impression. The leading female role for Rebecca, a David O. Selznick production, is much sought after. Costume pictures include the excellently scripted Pride and Prejudice and the crisply filmed remake of The Mark of Zorro. In Strike Up the Band, the teaming of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland is well-received yet again. A new classic to emerge this year is the very witty The Philadelphia Story, starring Katherine Hepburn.

Walter Brennan and Gary Cooper in Meet John Doe

1941: Frank Capra triumphs again with Meet John Doe (“Wake up, John Doe, you’re the hope of the world,” says Gary Cooper). Another Cooper picture is Sergeant York, a patriotic classic. In The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart is his usual self (“When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it”). Prestigious director John Ford gathers an excellent cast for the weepy How Green Was My Valley. Betty Grable dances with the Condos Brothers in Moon Over Miami; Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland team together for the eighth and last time in They Died with Their Boots On.

Ronald Colman and Greer Garson in Random Harvest

1942: One comedy finely done is The Talk of the Town, with a rare grouping of three big stars: Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, and Ronald Colman. Colman is also in Random Harvest, this time as a shell-shocked soldier. This Gun for Hire shows that even with the Gary Coopers and the James Stewarts, even a short man can make an impression (Ladd was only five-foot-six). Woman of the Year pairs Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn together for the first time. Future president Ronald Reagan considers his best film to be the dramatic Kings Row.

Background: George Murphy, Thomas Mitchell, Lee Bowman, Robert Walker, Desi Arnaz; foreground: Lloyd Nolan and Robert Taylor in Battan

1943: Starring the fourteen-year-old Roddy McDowall is Lassie Comes Home, in beautiful Technicolor. The philosophical Human Comedy stars Frank Morgan and Mickey Rooney. Alfred Hitchcock makes his own favorite film, Shadow of a Doubt (Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten) while Henry Fonda stars in an “off-beat, down-beat” Western, The Ox-Bow Incident. A Robert Taylor film, Bataan, is a last-stand war story, with stunning photography and music that seems ahead of its time.

Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis

1944: The Seventh Cross is an anti-Nazi picture with a splendid cast. Judy Garland is given one of her most famous and successful pictures with Meet Me in St. Louis—which, in a way, revolutionizes musicals. Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine star in the dramatic Jane Eyre (a Charlotte Bronte novel). Bing Crosby gives a noteworthy performance as Father O’Malley, singing “Swinging on a Star” in Going My Way. Fredric March stars in The Adventures of Mark Twain, a biopic.

Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet

1945: This year, Welsh actor Ray Milland is presented his first truly leading and dramatic role in The Lost Weekend. For State Fair, Rodgers and Hammerstein do the honors for the music, though one reviewer warns that the film is “not for the cynical or the jaundiced.” Anchors Aweigh is another musical, with Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, and Gene Kelly—in Sinatra’s first major screen appearance, he convincingly looks the part of the sailor. National Velvet is a fine dramatic film, tempered by Mickey Rooney’s energy. They Were Expendable is a lengthy, “lyrical” war film.

Henry Fonda and Cathy Downs in My Darling Clementine

1946: Considered the best picture about coming-home veterans, The Best Years of Our Lives wins seven Oscars. Two startling films this year are The Spiral Staircase (in which Dorothy McGuire plays a mute serving girl) and Cloak and Dagger (a staggering spy film with Lilli Palmer). Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature is Doc Holliday in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine. A Columbia picture about singer and entertainer Al Jolson, The Jolson Story, is well-liked by its viewers.

Maureen O’Hara, Natalie Wood, and John Payne in Miracle on 34th Street

1947: The Farmer’s Daughter, a pleasing Loretta Young comedy, wins her an Oscar, but more noteworthy is the acting of Ethel Barrymore and Charles Bickford. Richard Widmark receives fourth billing in Kiss of Death, starting his film career playing the infamous Tommy Udo. Magic Town tries to capture some of director Frank Capra’s charm, but fails miserably, especially with its hasty ending. A Christmas film, later to be a classic, is released half-heartedly in June of 1947: Miracle on 34th Street.

Cary Grant (center) in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

1948: Cary Grant is at his blundering best in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, while the usually cool, calm, and collected Barbara Stanwyck plays a hypochondriac in Sorry Wrong Number. Irene Dunne is in I Remember Mama, an innocent string of reminisces of a Norwegian family in America. And two Westerns of the year are the memorable Howard Hawks film, Red River, and “the only Western ever made without a shot fired”, Four Faces West.

James Stewart and Frank Morgan in The Stratton Story

1949: The decade is wrapped up with The Great Gatsby, a prohibition drama starring Alan Ladd. All the King’s Men, a political film, is voted the best picture of the year. Hedy Lamarr stars with Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah (Lamarr, whom some consider the most beautiful actress of the time, is well suited to the role of Delilah). A baseball biopic, The Stratton Story, stars James Stewart, while Sands of Iwo Jima brings John Wayne his first Oscar nomination.

Photograph credits: MARK OF ZORRO: themoviedb.org; MEET JOHN DOE: shomingekiblog; RANDOM HARVEST: oscarchamps; BATAAN: philstar; MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS: theaceblackblog; NATIONAL VELVET: coleypugtalksoldmovies.blogspot.com; MY DARLING CLEMENTINE: dailyforest; MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: classic--movies.blogspot.com; MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE: hookedonhouses.net; THE STRATTON STORY: classic--movies.blogspot.com.