My Son John

Somewhat paranoiac drama looking at the perceived communist threat in the 40s and 50s. Overwrought in both direction and performance-Helen Hayes in particular seems on the very verge throughout the film. Walker died suddenly during the making of the film and his performance was completed by cobbling together outtakes from Strangers on a Train and the use of a stand-in in some scenes, its easy to pick out most of the these and it cast an odd melancholy pall over the picture. More of an interesting artifact of a troubled time in US history than a good example of film making. McCarey could be an exceptional director who made many fine films and possessed a few Oscars but he is decidedly off his game here. A strange experience.

In viewing My Son John you have to keep a few things in mind. First Leo McCarey directed and wrote the film. Second Leo McCarey was a staunch anti-Communist and part of Hollywood's right wing caucus. Third Leo McCarey was also a devout and practicing Catholic. Fourth Leo McCarey was also one of Hollywood's bigger alcoholics. Put all that together and I think you've got the answer to how My Son John was created.

It's interesting to speculate how My Son John would have turned out if Robert Walker had lived to complete the film. Putting the patchwork ending on the film that he was forced to do left a lot of plot holes. For one thing, I'm not sure exactly why the FBI in the person of Van Heflin was on to Walker. He's a government bureaucrat, a high level one, but we never really learn what he did as a job and what he might have been doing for the Communists.

What Walker is is the oldest son of Dean Jagger and Helen Hayes as a representative a group of middle Americans as you can get. He's quite a bit older than his brothers and made a good academic record and now is a big success in Washington. His two jock younger brothers, Richard Jaeckel and James Young are about to go to war in Korea and he's back home for the family sendoff. You know right away something's amiss when he shows up late, not really having the heart to wish his brothers well in fighting against the Reds in Korea.

How do you spot a Communist? Well if you're Leo McCarey you've got to dislike the Catholic Church you've been brought up in. That's what Walker does, he makes snide remarks about the church and other wholesome American institutions. Man's got to be a subversive as his parents come to realize. Remember Pius XII was Pope at the time and he was a staunch anti-Communist. This is where McCarey's Catholicism comes into play.

How incredibly naive. If Walker were really an effective spy he'd be the loudest amen shouter in church, make the most obviously big contributions in the collection plate etc. to keep his cover.

Frank McHugh reprises his role from Going My Way as Father O'Dowd who apparently has left the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen New York and Barry Fitzgerald and now is pastoring out in the red states. Since McCarey also wrote and directed Going My Way and created McHugh's character he certainly could do what he wanted with him. But for the life of me I can't figure out why McHugh adopted a brogue for this film when he had none in Going My Way.

When Leo McCarey was creating some of the best screen comedy like The Awful Truth and Once Upon A Honeymoon, there were few his peer and none better. But he was out of his league in dealing with political material. And if you're wondering about how this might have turned out if Walker had lived, take a look at McCarey's last film, Satan Never Sleeps. Also an anti-Communist film it makes My Son John look like Citizen Kane.

In its way, this film is a historical document (albeit a misguided one), and certainly a product of its time. Made at the height of the infamous red scare, "My Son John" is so fervent in its anti-Communist message that it becomes somewhat fascinating as a piece of social history.The film has become famous (or perhaps more correctly notorious) as propaganda; despite the sometimes; overwrought script, the film is not without a talented cast. The great theatrical actress Helen Hayes, in one of her relatively rare movie appearances, is really very good as the mother, as is Dean Jagger as the father, and Robert Walker is fine as the son who is the object of his parent's suspicions. (Walker actually died before filming was finished, so some scenes were shot with a double or prepared with footage from Walker's earlier film "Strangers On A Train", or re-written to exclude Walker's character or requiring his presence.)

In response to another reviewer, who wondered who had actually seen this film - I saw it a couple of times on Canadian television, once in the 1970's, and the last time in December, 1990. To my knowledge, it hasn't been shown on Canadian TV (at least in my viewing area) since that time.

Update: The film was released on DVD and blu-ray in 2015.

Made in 1952 at the height of the McCarthy era Red Scare when studio chiefs were scurrying to prove their patriotism and disavow rumors of Communist infiltrators in their midst while members of the Senate's House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC) were clamoring for their heads, this unintentionally hilarious howler rivals "Reefer Madness" and "The Green Berets" in its sanctimonious dissemination of moralistic disinformation.

Robert Walker plays "My Son John" Jefferson, whom you recognize immediately as an insidious Commie agent because he creeps like a rat through the shadows wearing a long overcoat with the collar turned up and a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, passing secret papers to similarly dressed fifth columnists at night behind Washington monuments.

But John is more than stealthful and insidious: he is sarcastic to his priest (Frank McHugh) and disrespectful to his long-suffering mother (Helen Hayes), which motivates his father (Dean Jagger) to beat him over the head with the family Bible as John kneels at his feet. (Dr. Freud, please put down your note pad). When the family physician (Minor Watson) explains that research scientists are guided by Divine Inspiration while searching for cures to diseases and John sneers, "I see - He hides things and then He helps us find them!" one wonders exactly to whom (or against whom) this propaganda is directed.

"If you don't like your Uncle Sammy," thunders Dean Jagger, former Doughboy, thumping his chest and marching around the living room, "Go back to your home o'er the sea!" - an obvious warning to any fellow traveling pinkos sitting in the audience (or hiding behind studio typewriters), wearing long overcoats with their collars turned up and broad-brimmed hats pulled down low over their eyes.

We don't watch movies to seek out their faults and laugh at their foibles: we want to enjoy them. Suspension of disbelief and a generous tolerance allows us to accept most films of the 30's, 40's and 50's at face value; as we would overlook the primitive special effects of those decades compared to those of our own; as we ignore the fact that clouds don't move on sound stages and the spokes of wagon wheels always seem to be revolving backwards. But it's difficult, if not impossible, to take this silly, pedantic film seriously. Obviously the director and the actors responsible for its production did not, or they would have used their talents (which are formidable) to make a better picture.

When you tire of scoffing, you will lament the waste of talent: Helen Hayes was the First Lady of the American Theater; Robert Walker was one of the finest up and coming young actors of his generation, equally gifted in both drama and comedy; Dean Jagger, Frank McHugh, and Minor Watson were top notch supporting players for over 40 years, from the early talkies well into their old age; and the legendary Leo McCarey, whose long list of screen credits includes "Duck Soup" with the Marx Brothers, and "Going My Way" with Bing Crosby, for which he won the Best Director Oscar in 1945, was also the genius who introduced Mr. Laurel to Mr. Hardy.

This film is not available on either VHS or DVD and to my knowledge is never, shown on TV. It's been years, indeed, decades, since I last saw it. One question, that the film makes no attempt to answer, continues to linger: what was there about John's God-fearing, patriotic upbringing by his overbearing but obviously loving parents that made him join that Communist Party which was so committed to the violent overthrow of American middle-class society and values?

Much maligned in its day as one of Hollywood's much too fervent attempts at atonement to the HUAC and McCarthy for having once hired so many communists, this slick Paramount picture made in 1952 remains a social document that reveals the right-wing views some members of the film community held during those dark days. It glorifies an idealized small-town family. Dad (Dean Jagger) is a solid hard-working citizen, a Legioner who finds time to toss around a football with his two blonde athletic sons about to fight the good war in Korea; he's a man who goes to church every Sunday. The flaw in the perfect unit is mother--who else?-- and her curse of too much Mommy love; Helen Hayes, for some reason, too obviously dotes on the son (Robert Walker) who doesn't play football, doesn't go to church, and prefers the company of college professors, yes professors, to his own family. He is, horror of horrors, a practicing self-admitted intellectual.

Needless to say, we eventually learn that any spoiled child brought up this way cannot be up to good. Despite this silly propogandist view of the true values of decent American life, the film is very well directed by the great Leo McCarey, excellently acted by all the leading players. Robert Walker, in his last film, is particularly effective as the non-athletic son with heretic (read unAmerican) views. If the film had been made a decade or so later, his secret would have been that he was gay, but as this is 1952, the sin is political.