The reshaping of the character of Lotta Morgan was no doubt due to Hawks, who tailored the role for Frances Farmer. A minor character in the novel, she is described as only a mediocre singer with a limp (because one leg is shorter than the other). In the film, she is beautiful and lusty and an accomplished singer. Wyler also changed Lotta's song. In Ferber's novel, she sings a loggers’ drinking song with the refrain “Heigh ho! Drink round brave boys,”25 but in the film, her musical number is the traditional folk ballad “Aura Lee,” which extols an idealized, romantic love: “Aura Lee! Aura Lee! Maid of golden hair / Sunshine came along with thee, and swallows in the air.” The song embodies Barney's reaction to the singer—instantly smitten, he announces that a saloon is no place for her and offers her train fare to return home. When she refuses his money, he courts her and declares his love. Barney soon abandons Lotta, however, when Hewitt sends him a telegram inviting Barney to his home and reminding him that his daughter Emma is waiting. Barney asks Swan (who also loves Lotta) to tell her good-bye for him, and Swan ends up marrying her instead. This highlighting of the romantic love theme, followed by Barney's unwillingness to face Lotta, establishes his ruthless ambition with a dramatic flair that far exceeds the novel's spare narration.
Barney's willingness to pursue financial success rather than romantic love further undercuts the Hawksian preoccupation with professionalism for its own sake. The character's hardheartedness in love suggests that, rather than being an integral part of a fraternal group, Barney may be merely using his position within the group to exploit his men, which would be antithetical to the Hawksian code. The early scripts by Jane Murfin—she replaced Edward Chodorov (who also worked on Dodsworth) when Ferber objected to his changes to her novel—do not establish Barney's love for Lotta Morgan. There, Lotta seems to love Barney, but he thinks Swan would make her a better husband, and Lotta seems equally fond of Swan, which is not the case in the finished film. Murfin's scripts also suggest that Lotta understands that Barney's priority is making money, and his unwillingness to pretend to have a romantic interest in her makes him more sympathetic.
It is possible that Wyler reworked some of the opening sequences to make the loss of romantic love a central theme and to give Lotta's love for Barney more emphasis than is evident in either the novel or Hawks's conception. Such an intention also seems to be signaled by the use of “Aura Lee” in the film's introductory title sequence. Wyler may have wanted to darken Barney's character and expose the brutality of a system that produces men like him—a theme that is closer to Wyler's concerns during this period than to Hawks's. According to Scott Berg, Hawks shifted the focus of the plot in the direction of a “buddy movie, the story of two friends and a girl.”26 Wyler, then, seems to have readjusted that focus, telling the tale of a tycoon's quest to recapture the past by courting the daughter of his abandoned love.
Although the film opens in 1884 with a statement about men who “hacked and tore and gauged and schemed and took and took and never replaced,” neither director paid much attention to Ferber's ecology theme. Nor is there any sustained effort to develop the rapacity-of-business theme. When the film's narrative shifts to Barney as a wealthy man with two grown children, there is a scene at the breakfast table (lifted from the novel) in which Barney's son, Richard, talks about Theodore Roosevelt's plans to intervene to curb the abuses of big business—which Barney naturally opposes. The reference to Roosevelt's trust-busting efforts would not have been lost on audiences in 1936, who were familiar with Franklin Roosevelt's reform movement toward responsible and progressive capitalism. Nevertheless, these incipient themes of the male group ethos, Barney's ruthless business practices, and the preservation of natural resources all promptly disappear from the film, which devotes its energy instead to the story of Barney's love for the younger Lotta and the rivalry with his son for her affections.
Barney first encounters this young woman when he visits Swan at Iron Ridge. She is working as a waitress at the local restaurant, and when she comes over to his table, the “Aura Lee” theme is heard. She looks just like her mother, and Barney, entranced, evidently sees in her the happiness that has so far eluded him. (Earlier, at Swan's house, when asked if he is happy, Barney hesitates before answering with a tentative yes.) We soon learn, however, that this Lotta has a touch of Barney in her. In a scene with her aunt Karie (not her mother, as in the novel), she acknowledges that she is aware of Barney's interest and suggests that she will use it to her advantage. This frank acknowledgment of her ambition immediately undercuts Lotta's potential as a romantic ideal, and it places Barney in a position much like that of Fran Dodsworth, who is out of her depth in European society but blinded by its surface brilliance and sophistication. Captivated by Lotta's youth and beauty, Barney cannot see her American need to “come and get it.” And like Fran, he will fail to recognize that he is too old for his romantic fantasy until he is forcefully confronted by the reality of it—Fran's rebuke by Baroness von Obersdorf will be echoed in Lotta's harsh rejection of Barney late in the film.
The film, meanwhile, faithfully follows the plot of the novel, underscoring Barney's infatuation as he takes Karie, Swan, and Lotta to Chicago and installs them in a cottage near his house. He employs Swan and Karie at his factory and sends Lotta to business school. The film's narrative then breaks from the novel, showing Richard falling for Lotta and courting her in scenes that include a charming and suggestive episode in which he helps her make candy. This scene is generally credited to Hawks, though the strengthening of Richard's role—and, by extension, the screen prominence of Joel McCrea, who was given star billing—is most likely Wyler's doing.
The film also develops an interesting connection between Barney's relationship with Lotta and that with his daughter Evie. Evie, like Lotta, calls her father Barney, while her mother refers to him as Mr. Glasgow. The candy-making scene between Richard and Lotta is closely followed by one in which Evie, who is playing with a string toy, tells her father that she is breaking off her engagement to the wealthy Orvie and intends to marry Tony Schwerke. Unlike her father—and unlike her character in the novel, who goes ahead with the marriage to Orvie—the film's Evie will marry for love. And like her brother, she will marry someone who is beneath her socially. This mixing of classes, offering the potential of upward mobility and the promise of a revitalized and more beneficent capitalism, gives Come and Get It an optimistic feel that no doubt contributed to its success with audiences.
During the confessional scene, Evie warns her father against his involvement with Lotta, although she claims to understand his unhappiness and his desire for romantic love. But Barney, fearing that his son will outdo him, proposes to Lotta soon afterward. His advances are interrupted by the arrival of Karie with some homemade candy, but Barney tells Lotta that they will speak further at the company lawn party—thus leading to the confrontation that concludes the film.
The party sequence has all the visual hallmarks of a Wyler film. The scene opens with Barney and his family greeting guests. Before the Bostroms arrive, Richard brings Lotta into the house, where he proposes to her in an elegantly shot sequence in which the two are profiled in front of a window, the white curtains highlighting the black hat that occasionally shadows part of Lotta's face. The lighting by Rudolph Maté, who took over from Gregg Toland when Wyler became director, is soft, and the shadows give the scene a painterly feel. The proposal scene is interrupted, however, when Wyler cuts to Barney hurrying through the large dining room, looking for Richard. Here, Wyler's fondness for emphasizing space is reminiscent of his treatment of Mrs. Tilford's home and the Dodsworths’. Barney's search leads him upstairs (another Wyler staircase), where he must confront his real self—the man he is, rather than the one he left behind decades earlier.
When Barney opens the door at the top of the stairs, the camera offers the most stunning shot in the film as it finds Lotta and Richard over Barney's shoulder, framed by the door and the curtains, the shadows practically hiding Lotta's face.
Barney confronts his son, slaps him twice, and dares him to fight. Then he punches Richard, who falls. When Richard gets up, the two men clinch, and Richard tells his father that he and Lotta are in love and plan to marry. Infuriated, Barney is about to restart the fight when Lotta cautions Richard not to hurt his father, who is an old man. This remark stops Barney in his tracks and defeats him. Again, the moment directly parallels that in which Kurt's mother reminds Fran of her age in Dodsworth.
Robin Wood and others have argued that this scene is Hawksian because it anticipates the confrontation between Tom Dunson (John Wayne) and his adopted son, Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift), in Red River. Wood writes, “At the crisis, father and son begin to fight. The girl intervenes, and her presence is responsible for bringing the father to his senses, making him realize his love for his son, and leading him to accept the young people's marriage.”27 Wood's comparison, however, does not take into account the differing circumstances and motivations of the aging fathers who are resisting their sons’ maturity. Tom Dunson's fury is driven by his consuming need to sell cattle—as he explains to Matt and Groot (Walter Brennan), he is broke. In Come and Get It, however, Barney's jealousy is motivated by emotional need—he will never be able to accept his son's marriage.
After the confrontation with Richard, Barney begins to descend the staircase. At the same time, his wife heads up the stairs, looking for him. Wyler foregrounds Barney in shadow, while Emma is sharply lit in the background. As they descend together, Barney tells her that he has thrown Richard out of the house because he is marrying “that girl.” Emma, who is aware of Barney's infatuation, is relieved to learn that her husband is not leaving her. Simply remarking that “perhaps even you can't have everything you want,” she then urges Barney to call in the guests for dinner.
Walking over to the triangle he once used to summon his crew to meals when he was a lumberjack, Barney admits to Swan that he is a foolish old man. As he begins to ring the triangle, Wyler frames his face in it, as if forcing Barney to accept his diminished condition. Wyler then cuts to Richard and Lotta as they move through the crowd and away from the house, and then back to Barney's face, still framed in the triangle, reflecting pain and anguish as he calls “Come and get it” more forcefully—almost hysterically. The tight framing and his anguished expression suggest that Barney has finally acknowledged that his life, sacrificed on the altar of money and success, has been wasted. Like Fran Dodsworth, he is made to recognize his errors in judgment at the film's conclusion.
Wyler's final scene in Come and Get It is markedly different from Hawks's conclusion to Red River. Hawks's scene, for one thing, is much more violent: when Tom confronts Matt, he shoots at him five times, trying to force his son to draw his gun, and when this fails, he starts punching Matt until the younger man finally fights back. The struggle is eventually broken up by Tess (Joanne Dru), who reminds them that they really love each other. Father and son acknowledge their love, and the film ends with Tom making Matt his partner at the ranch and changing the brand to signify a union that, until that moment, had been unspoken. Hawks was criticized for substituting a more conventional happy ending for the traditional one originally planned for his film, which would have had Tom, the flawed tragic figure, dying at the end but recognizing his failings before he dies and leaving Matt free to live his life.
Wyler's vision is more unsparing, but after all the script modifications and then the change in directors, Come and Get It is neither well developed nor focused enough to qualify as tragedy. Unlike Tom Dunson, Barney Glasgow is left at the end without his son or Lotta. He still has the wife he never loved and a business empire that no longer fulfills his needs. The differences in temperament between the two directors are as marked as their styles, but in Come and Get It, Wyler has the last word.
When filming was finally finished, Wyler and Goldwyn had another fight. Goldwyn wanted to drop Hawks's name altogether and give Wyler sole credit as director. Wyler adamantly refused, insisting not only that Hawks's name be retained in the film's credits but that his own be omitted. Goldwyn finally compromised, and both names appear in the credits. Wyler won a victory of sorts, however, in that Hawks's name appears first. Wyler never considered Come and Get It one of his films and rarely discussed it.
Despite its considerable problems, Come and Get It fared just as well with the critics as Dodsworth had. The New York Times opened its review by praising Goldwyn and pronouncing the film “as fine in its way as those earlier Goldwyn successes of this year, ‘These Three’ and ‘Dodsworth.’ It has the same richness of production, the same excellence of performance, the same shrewdness of direction.”28 In a letter to Wyler, Jimmy Townsend of Myron Selznick's office wrote that William Wellman, who had attended the premiere, said “he would be proud to have his name on the picture” and went on to call it “the current rave in Hollywood.”29 This assessment turned out to be accurate: despite its escalated costs, Come and Get It outperformed Dodsworth at the box office.
6
The Street Where They Live
Dead End (1937)
After Come and Get It, Goldwyn decided to assign his star director to another prestige property, Dead End. Wyler and Goldwyn had seen the play together in March 1936 (it had opened in October of the previous year), when Wyler was working with Sidney Howard on the Dodsworth script. Once Goldwyn had purchased the rights, Wyler would see it for a second time in September with noted playwright Clifford Odets, who was apparently being considered to write the screenplay. After the show, Wyler sent his boss a telegram: “Odets and I saw Dead End for second time tonight both feel we could make outstanding picture.”1
Dead End was the second hit for playwright Sidney Kingsley, whose first play, Men in White (1933), had won the Pulitzer Prize. It then became the Group Theatre's first commercial success, running for 357 performances on Broadway; it had a substantial run in London as well. Dead End would prove to be an even bigger success, with 684 performances—an extraordinary run for a serious play.
Kingsley's early success as a playwright was due in part to some fortunate production choices. Much of the success of Men in White was due to Lee Strasberg's brilliant direction. Intuiting that the central strength of Kingsley's play was its detailed portrait of hospital life, Strasberg centered on the pictorial qualities of the work, culminating in a breathtaking scene of an operation: Bright white lights focused on the operating table, flooding the area and causing the doctors’ gowns and the sheet over the patient to stand out against the blue walls. When the doctor said “Scalpel,” another light made the blade glint as it was lowered toward the body. Producer Cheryl Crawford recalled that this effect was “as painful as the scalpel making the incision.”2
The staging and the spectacular effects distracted audiences—but not critics—from Kingsley's shortcomings as a playwright, which included a tendency to create one-dimensional, representative characters and cumbersome dialogue that drained those characters of any capacity for self-reflection or genuine emotion. Kingsley's plays, however, remain notable for their sense of optimism and their faith in progress, the future, and the human spirit. Men in White is a tribute to the medical profession and to the doctors who sacrifice their personal happiness for the improvement of medical care. Kingsley dedicated the play to “the men in medicine who dedicate themselves, with quiet heroism, to man,” thus aligning it with the optimism of New Deal America and assuring the play's popularity.3
Dead End would also be distinguished by a spectacular set, designed by Norman Bel Geddes, that stunned audiences with its depiction of an entire neighborhood. A narrow tenement street ran down one side of the stage, while the other featured a new apartment building for the wealthy. Another street dead-ended at New York's East River; the pier's pylons and rotting timbers were extended over the edge of the stage and into the orchestra pit, which doubled as the river. Bel Geddes even recorded the sounds of the streets, the river beating against the pier, the foghorns in the harbor, and the splash of water when t
he tenement kids jumped into the river to swim—the actors actually jumped into a net in the orchestra pit below, while a stagehand threw some water up onto the stage to make it appear that the pit was filled with water.4
Like much of his work, Kingsley's second play is a didactic piece that remains firmly rooted in the social activism that was prominent in much of the literature and theater of the 1930s. This work, too, revolves around social issues, presenting characters who typify either a condition or a social position. Dead End is a naturalist drama, focusing on the environment's role in shaping character and on the tendency, in a society that allows wealth and poverty to exist side by side, to foster and encourage crime. The play's epigraph is from Thomas Paine: “The contrast of affluence and wretchedness is like dead and living bodies chained together.” Despite its shortcomings, Kingsley's presentation of a reality so stark and so uncompromising ultimately forced his society to confront those problems. Eleanor Roosevelt came to see the play three times and arranged its command performance at the White House. President Franklin Roosevelt subsequently appointed a slum study commission. Dead End was also the inspiration for Congress's passage of the Wagner housing bill, providing financial assistance to the states to eliminate unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions.
At the center of the play is a gang of teenagers who congregate on the streets and swim in the filthy East River. (The neighborhood is the East Fifties, near what is now Sutton Place.) They play cards, fight with other gangs, and roast potatoes in garbage cans. But the coarse vitality of this street culture is being impinged on by the presence of new high-rise luxury apartments, whose residents view these kids as hoodlums. The lives of the teenagers are interlaced with several other story lines. One involves a young, idealistic, but out-of-work architect named Gimpty, who grew up in the neighborhood and sympathizes with the boys’ plight. He loves a young woman named Kay, who lives in the new luxury apartment building, and he idealizes her, in part because she seems unreachable. He is also friendly with Drina, the older sister of a gang member who is raising her brother and is active with her union.
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