One Sunday Afternoon (OSA) shares an interesting history with its one theatrical predecessor and two subsequent movie remakes (one of which was retitled The Strawberry Blond). The primary source for this group of three films is a Broadway play that ran in 1933 for nine months and 322 performances. The play by James Hagan involved the various relationships (and their complications) of its hero---Biff Grimes. The feisty young mail-order dentist (originally played on the stage by veteran character actor/leading man Lloyd Nolan) went through a number of trials and travails, from unrequited love to betrayal by a "friend," until all the problems are satisfactorily resolved with a happy ending to cap the sentimental and nostalgic story.
In an unusual development while the play was still in its original 1933 Broadway run, OSA was acquired by Paramount Studio and produced as a feature movie that starred Gary Cooper as Grimes. On the face of it, the Grimes role would seem to be outside of both Cooper's usual screen image and also his range as an actor---and this appears evident from a viewing of the film. In it, Cooper comes across as both hot tempered and somewhat edgy-----and lacks the unique charm that he generally brought to so many of his later memorable screen roles. OSA is one of the very few movies made by Cooper during this period that was unsuccessful at the box office. It also featured a lovely performance by the winsome, petite and little-known Frances Fuller as Amy Lind, matinee idol Neil Hamilton as Hugo the "friend" and veteran supporting actor Roscoe Karns as Biff's sidekick.
Notwithstanding the financial failure of the Cooper film, Warner Brothers acquired the property in the late 1930s. It ultimately came to the attention of director Raoul Walsh and actress Olivia de Havilland, and both expressed an interest in remaking OSA now retitled The Strawberry Blond (TSB). The featured role of Virginia Brush, who was the attractive young woman Grimes loved from afar (played by Fay Wray in the Cooper version) was slated for contract player Ann Sheridan. She promptly went on suspension to avoid doing the part, so WB then borrowed the little known (at the time) starlet Rita Hayworth from Columbia Pictures to play the title Strawberry Blond character. It turned out to be a pivotal positive development in Hayworth's long career, as well as one of de Havilland's most endearing and fondly remembered portrayals as the loving and loyal Amy Lind. WB wisely cast James Cagney as the excitable yet good natured Biff Grimes, who then astonished many people with his fine part comic/part dramatic star turn. Jack Carson completed the lead cast as Biff's unscrupulous "friend." TSB was engaging, appealing and rather sweet in its own special way. It remains as a lovely entertaining film to this very day.
For whatever reason, Walsh was induced to remake TSB as a musical in 1948 with Dennis Morgan as Biff, Don DeFore as the "friend," Janis Paige as the Strawberry Blond and Dorothy Malone as Amy. Like the earlier Cooper version, OSA the musical did poorly both critically and commercially. It is reminiscent of what happened to acclaimed director Frank Capra when he, too, decided to remake one of his great early classics Lady for a Day in 1966. The resulting film now titled A Pocketful Of Miracles did so badly at the box office that it spelled the end of Capra's career as a major film director. It really is quite difficult for the lightning of success to strike the same property twice.
Here is a piece of trivia that you may not know. The Hagan play was once translated into Yiddish and renamed One Sabbath Afternoon! The Yiddish version was later revived in 1939, and it received high praise from the New York Times during its Gotham run! Perhaps this may be viewed as an exception to the rule previously cited on the above paragraph!
