Primrose Path

I thoroughly enjoyed the acting in this film: Ginger Rogers as the daughter of prostitute Marjorie Rambeau (an Oscar nomination), who supports the family; Joel McCrea as the man Rogers sort of ropes into marrying; Miles Mander as her educated alcoholic father, who can translate Greek but is otherwise useless and knows it; Queenie Vassar as her grandmother, an ex-prostitute who would rather see Rogers become a prostitute than settle down with McCrea; and the remarkable young child actress, Joan Carroll as Rogers' young sassy kid sister. Her rendition of the poem "Don't Swat Your Mother, Boys" was a hoot. When McCrea meets Rogers as she digs for clams, and steals a kiss (her first one) as he starts to gives her a lift home, she falls in love. That night she goes to see McCrea at the Bluebell Club and lies when she says she's run away and can't return, never mentioning her family for fear of alienating him. They marry, but of course the truth comes out eventually, creating a rift. The acting is so natural I felt as though I was looking into a window observing the lives of these people.

The word "prostitute" is never mentioned (it would have given the 1940 censors apoplexy), but it was obvious anyway. Still, the film was banned in Detroit, and the play was modified to placate those censors. Queenie Vassar was primarily a stage actress; this was her first film.

After Ginger Rogers scored so well in a serious drama like Stage Door, the brass there were less reluctant to give her substantial parts. Ginger gives a great performance in Primrose Path, a good lead into what would be her Oscar winner with Kitty Foyle that same year.

The play by Robert Buckner and Walter Hart is based on a most steamy novel February Hill by Victoria Lincoln. February Hill was apparently the God's Little Acre of its day, it's steamy sex scenes had to be toned down considerably for the stage and even more so for the Code driven cinema of 1940. The novel and play were set in my area of the country, Buffalo and later out near Lake Canandaigua which is a considerable distance away.

In toning down the sex the screenwriters also switched the location to Northern California and with that making Primrose Path look a whole lot like John Steinbeck's work and characters. But no matter how you slice it, no denying that Ginger's white trash family make their living with prostitution, a low class version of Leslie Caron's family in Gigi.

Ginger thinks there's something better out there and her mother Marjorie Rambeau encourages her in that. She meets up with a nice, low key owner of a gas station and greasy spoon restaurant down the road in Joel McCrea. He's better than some of the low life men who her mother and grandmother would you believe consort with. He's also a lot better package than her own father, the alcoholic Miles Mander.

Primrose Path doesn't age well for today, it's a case of the Code seriously compromising the nature of the material. If it were remade today we'd see a more frank version. The players do fine with their roles and Marjorie Rambeau got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but lost to Jane Darwell for The Grapes Of Wrath.

Try and think of who you might cast in a remake today of Primrose Path. I could see Brendan Fraser in Joel McCrea's part myself.

This is one of Gregory La Cava's last pictures and doesn't seem to be very well known. Film critic Andrew Sarris didn't seem to think much of it in his book The American Cinema, and rates it as one of his lower pictures. I never would of watched this movie before until i discovered how great Ginger Rogers was and now i want to watch all her films. Rogers plays a poor girl who lives in the slums with a drunk father, a prostitute for a mother and some other relatives. Rogers has no interest in guys until she meets Joel McCrea at a restaurant and they wind up married. She lies about her family to him and it causes some problems between them. Ginger Rogers is good as usual and Joel McCrea is very good as the husband.

Joel McCrea & Ginger Rogers star in this tale of a romance from across the tracks. Rogers lives in a ramshackle home populated by a ramshackle family who's matriarch is a lady of the night & the patriarch is a souse. When she meets McCrea, who is a go-getter working at a gas station slash hash-house, she thinks her financial woes are over & soon marries him but when the truth of Rogers' family come to bear, McCrea feels trapped & betrayed & acts accordingly (at least he thinks so). Mixing humor, pathos & romance in what could've been an unsavory package, this film finds the right note for the telling.

"Primrose Path," directed by a famous drunkard, is the tale of a family made dysfunctional by a drunkard. Director Gregory LaCava knew his subject down to his fingertips; in her memoirs Ginger Rogers, star of the film, describes LaCava on the set, holding an ever-present tea cup filled with gin. Here he embarks on a profound meditation of relationships, and of evil, and of good. This 1940 production has been largely dismissed by critics. They are nearly unanimous in their gross failure to grasp La Cava's stroke of genius.

The characters circle each other and swirl together and apart to paint a vignette of a thoroughly wrecked family, finely brushed by actors compelled by LaCava to perform at a very high level.

Miles Mander, as Homer Adams, gives a masterful performance as an intellectual lost to the bottle. His jerky movements reveal a bandy-legged drunkard who spends his life in his bedroom scribbling about Ancient Greece or prostrate upon his bed in a stupor, muscles atrophied and willpower shattered. He has abdicated his role as head of the family to his mother-in-law and bitterly resents his own weakness.

In what is surely one of the most vile creatures ever committed to film, Queenie Vassar portrays this de facto matriarch, a scathing, baleful old prostitute who works relentlessly towards her goal; to corrupt her daughter and her grand-daughters into depravity - to follow her down the Primrose Path.

Her daughter Mamie, played by Marjorie Rambeau, trapped in a hopeless marriage to a drunkard, has succumbed to Grandma's demands and provides for the family the only way she can. She looks at the world with weary, defeated eyes, and with a wisdom that can be obtained in no other way. The wide difference in ages between Mamie's two daughters suggests a scandal. Homer's outrage at his wife's behavior only fuels his alcoholism. Mamie is a classic enabler. She provides the money for the drink he uses to put out the fires of his scalding shame, by cavorting with other men. All the while Grandma looms, a harpy stooping to gnaw and rip at the prostrate institution of the family.

Grandma's deceit and lies pervade the atmosphere of the hovel and the granddaughters both learn at her knee how to lie and to deceive. The younger girl, knowing only the toxic culture of her family, is raised in Grandma's image and there seems little hope in her future. The older granddaughter, Ellie May Adams played by Ginger Rogers, has had a sadly neglected upbringing. Yet she clearly has a strong character and a knowledge of another kind of household - perhaps reflecting the Adams' life before they descended into depravity.

But Ellie May is not immune to the effects of her dysfunctional family. When she escapes Primrose Hill for the coast on an expedition to gather clams, she meets Ed Wallace, played by Joel McCrea. Ed is something new in Ellie's little circle. He isn't rich, but he's clearly honorable and hard working. There is an air of confidence and life about him, of hope. Ellie May promptly shows that she has learned a great deal from Grandma in the ways of lying and deceit. She has considerable abilities for manipulation and co-dependence, but at the same time we see a haunting hunger in her, for human warmth and honesty. The way she manipulates Ed while at the same time showing a sensitive and simple and honest love for him and his Uncle draws the viewer into her personality and her world.

The dialect heard in this film is all but extinct today, but it is a perfect example of the pot pourri of languages of the Dust Bowl Midwest, South, and West all driven together in the vanished California of the Great Depression. To hear this dialect, listen to interviews of Woody Guthrie, or to very early Merle Haggard. Rogers knew all those regions, had lived in them, and breathed in these dialects during her years in vaudeville. Ginger's portrayal of Ellie May Adams reveals one of the most complex characters in film.

There is a deep understanding of character in the performances of Ginger Rogers. Watch the unsure, hesitant, naive Ellie May bravely entering the Blue Bell to clumsily strut for Joel McCrea, and compare her to the sheer rock star charisma of Ginger Rogers working the burlesque catwalk as Lilly Linda in "Upperworld," or again with the elegant and stylish women of "Top Hat" or "Gay Divorcee".

Yet there is more here to tell than simply to describe the masterpiece of a gin-soaked genius, or one of the greatest performances of one of the greatest actresses.

With this film, Ginger Rogers - and her studio, putting it all on the line for her - took the biggest career risk of any major actor in the entire Golden Era of Hollywood. No other actor at the peak of their stardom ever took on such a role, and no other top actor moved so far out of their established screen persona. Certainly no studio in the era of block-booking ever put their greatest star in a role like Ellie May Adams. This was truly risk-taking for stakes and believing in your star.

Arguably Rogers reached the summit of her career with this astonishing tone poem of deceit, despair, and the redemption of love.