NOWHERE is movie censorship and the effect of a box-office control on art so apparent as in the second half of a double bill, where one might expect to find the movies’ practice fields and proving grounds—new talent, unconventional stories and ways of showing them. Instead one finds a macabre and grotesque thing like “The Great Gildersleeve.” This is a typical “B”—about an American family, the Gildersleeves, in the American town, Summerfield—made for the suburbs and the towns; so that the theatres there can coax their public with two pictures for the price of one. It merits discussion because it is typical.
Since we find that the B picture is not experimental, we might then expect, because censorship and box-office decree that no one’s feelings be either examined or hurt, that it at least be a fairly innocuous picture of an average American family. However, this is not it either; for up pops so gross a misrepresentation of American life that it might almost be a revulsion on the part of the producer at the kind of people and culture which made for the forces that made this picture. These “average” Americans in “The Great Gildersleeve” are all of the idiot variety, and the sole concern of each is to outtrick the rest by deceit, lie or practical joke.
The Great Gildersleeve is a huge, glutinous, moronic fellow, who moves about without aim, purpose or profession, yet rides in a fine car, to a fine home, in which there are two adopted children, a maid and a grand piano; his radio trademark seems to be an ability to get into trouble and when there to give an unconvincing laugh. His daughter leads around a five-piece orchestra of collegiate adolescents, who carry their trumpets and saxophones uncased; so that they can break into music at any place or moment, whereupon the daughter becomes a high-stepping drum majorette. The county judge is a disreputable version of the man with the pitchfork in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” His one concern is to marry off his homely sister and turn her room into a den for himself. The rest of the citizenry tag along after the judge or Gildersleeve to see which one will best the other.
The judge threatens to take Gildersleeve’s children away from him unless he marries the judge’s daughter. The children figure out the solution: they will make Gildersleeve more famous than even the judge, by covering the town with pictures of his face and titled only—The Great Gildersleeve. The idea being that fame and position depend—as the children explain—not on “What you do, but on what people think you did.”
Just as repellent is the picture projected of the American scene: the county court in session with only two people present, the recorder playing solitaire and the judge kibitzing; the great banquet where the town’s important citizens play their pranks on the guest speaker (the microphone squirts water in his face, there is a hidden buzzer in his chair); the footrace between Gildersleeve and the judge to decide which is the better man; and finally, those two vicious gossips, who get into all American-town-life movies as the trademark.
In everything, then, is ruthless disrespect for ourselves and our lives. It bears no resemblance to the French satires on European provincial life (“The Baker’s Wife,” “Carnival in Flanders”), nor to Alfred Hitchcock’s great displays of humor in his secondary characters. In these the criticism starts from essential love and respect for the people, and even more, from knowledge. The French movies take pride in their people, in their sexual potency and freedom, in the cleverness and bravery of the women, in their good looks, in the artistry of the craftsmen, in the pleasure instinct of the Jouvets, the independence of the Gabins. When the French movies poke fun it is at the mishaps caused by a too eager enjoyment of life. “The Great Gildersleeve” is absolutely without standards, its humor exterior to life.
I think “The Great Gildersleeve” is less the fault of Hollywood’s workers than it is of censorship, box-office and a lack of indignation from the movie public. The movie code decrees that the showing of actual love is indecent; in “The Great Gildersleeve” love becomes a matter of juggling for prestige, of how one person can trick the other into marrying. Pressure groups and box-office insist that actual American life not be examined closely; Americans’ activities in this movie consist entirely of childish pranks and conceits. Honest failure is considered shocking; instead success is shown, even if it is only a matter of advertising that fools the public. But also it is felt that real intellectual success is un-American, and so all leaders in the community are made plain, down-to-earth idiots. Finally, it is inacceptable for the characters in the movie to react with real emotion; the substitute for this warmth and human feeling is the defeat of the other person, roses round the door and money.
In B pictures the worst elements in Hollywood production run wild. There is neither time nor inclination in the production of B pictures for the invention and hard work that in A pictures overcome the codes and prejudices. Obviously there are too many pictures; there should be no B’s at all, unless they are used as experimental cinema, where the errors of inexperience, new and untried attitudes could be made and learned from. Perhaps the most deadly thing about “The Great Gildersleeve” is that it has no errors.
January 18, 1943