The Country Girl 1954

 

Hard to believe but I finally saw this nearly 60 year old movie for the first time the other day. Based on a play by Clifford Odets about an alcoholic washed up theatre actor who gets a second chance at life and a career when a tough theatre director fights for him to play the lead in a production that he’s directing. The movie version directed by George Seaton was changed to fit the lead actor Bing Crosby who is now is a washed up once successful musical comedy star and gets to wobble a few terrible songs in a few terrible staged numbers (look fast to see a young uncredited George Chakiris). The “drama” of this stagy and lifeless movie is the 3 way conflict between Crosby, his dowdy and put upon sad wife played by Grace Kelly in plain clothes and very little make-up and the director played by William Holden. The plot wants us to believe that the downfall of Bing and Grace was because of the tragic accidental death of their cute little son played by Jon Provost (also uncredited) a few years away from his nauseating turn in the TV series Lassie. Now a few years later Bing who does pretty well with the part and Grace who also does pretty well with her part are living in a cheap room where Grace mopes and irons and sews while Bing hides his booze from her and taking turns at blaming each other for their sorrows and woes. The set-up, the movement of the piece wants us to be torn between the two of them. We really don’t know until near the end of the movie who really is telling the truth and who is using who and who is the good one. Holden who is tough and rough not only on Crosby but also on Kelly who he thinks is the cause of all of Bing’s bingeing and self-doubts, but he soon changes his mind as he unconvincingly falls in love with Kelly. This is the film that Kelly won an Oscar for over Judy Garland’s tremendous performance in “A Star Is Born” to the lasting shame of the Academy. It is mentioned on IMDB that she won by only 6 votes and I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can see Kelly calling in all the favors owed her from the many big time movie star lovers that she went through like the tornado that whipped through Garland’s Kansas to get that little nude golden man. The final cherry on her Charlotte Russe. It also didn’t hurt that Kelly was being seen that year in the magnificent “Rear Window” and in 3-D in “Dial M for Murder” along with “Green Fire” and The Bridges at Toko-Ri”. So while Garland lay in a hospital bed waiting to give birth and find out if she would finally take home the gold with TV cameras watching her every move and nervous twitch, the future real life princess and one of Hollywood’s early movie star princess walked up to stage to collect Garland’s long desired and deserved Oscar for her own. Did Hollywood hate Garland so much that they had to throw one final humiliating blow at her on top of the many kicks and punches that she endured over her remarkable career? I guess so. Grace who plays the role soft and low with a few emotional outbursts does finally morph into movie star Kelly in her little black dress and pearls at the end of the film thus giving movie goers of the time a sigh of relief that underneath it all Kelly was still movie star royalty. Our Grace. Now we know that her life in Morocco was hardly all fairy tale perfect complete with a tragic real life ending. The film is stagey and claustrophobic taking place in a few rooms and in the theatre and finishes with an abrupt and somewhat happy ending with Grace and Bing walking off into a Park Avenue twilight.