All the Way Home

A wonderful, poignant story, beautifully acted against an Americana background. Quiet and deep. Sad and inevitable. The story is told, almost exclusively, through the eyes of a young (6-ish) boy, and the little man who played "Google-Eyes" brings a remarkable amount of depth and, could it possibly be insight?, into the character.

As an aside, the book upon which the play and subsequent movie was based, A Death in the Family by James Agee, was a Pulitzer prize winner. The American composer Samuel Barber used Agee's prologue to A Death in the Family for the text of his "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" - a concert piece for soprano and orchestra. Also a beautiful, almost languid experience.

This movie is almost a perfect distillation of the book, or at least, the perfect adaptation. There's a lot left out of the movie, a lot of background and some characters, but the movie still manages to capture the deepness of the story.

Beautiful cinematography, wonderful script, quiet interpretations, and a beautiful score.

I did find it available for purchase, just the movie, no extras, on iTunes. I think it's been edited, though, as I clearly recall seeing scenes on TV that weren't in the picture.

Catch this movie if you possibly can. And yes, bring some tissues.

When it came time to casting for All The Way Home, Tad Mosel's Broadway success based on James Agee's novel A Death In The Family, Robert Preston was considered and got the lead. Ironic because a year before Preston had to fight to get the lead in the film version of The Music Man which was his career role. He wasn't considered box office enough. But the huge success The Music Man was convinced Hollywood's elite he was indeed box office again. Preston and Jean Simmons got the leads in place of Arthur Hill and Colleen Dewhurst despite the fact that Dewhurst had won a Ton Award on Broadway. The play ran 333 performances on Broadway in the 1960-1961 season.

Agee's autobiographical work is set in Knoxville, Tennessee and concerns the reactions of the family nuclear and extended to the death of the father and breadwinner. The first half gives you a picture of the various family members and the second half deals with the sudden death of Preston playing the father. Ironically his father survives Preston in the play and in my family my grandmother survived mine and my mother survived my sister. So my family dynamic is similar to that of the Follets of Knoxville. Hence I could identify personally in a way with what was going on. Fate makes an additional point here by having Preston visit his father on a health related issue.

Shot in Agee's own Knoxville they got a good sense of what it was like in 1915 when the story is set. I get the feeling Knoxville hadn't changed that much in the interim years. One wonders what the area looks like now. The authenticity is stamped into the film.

Preston and Simmons are great in their roles. The highlight of the film is Simmons dealing with their young son played by Michael Kearney. This is one of the great performances given by a child actor because Kearney comes off as a real kid not some Hollywood kid. Simmons herself was brilliant throughout, but especially here.

All The Way Home missed a Tony, but got the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Tad Mosel as it had for James Agee in his original novel. The film is great and moving drama and highly recommended for family audiences dealing with what the Follet family deals with in the film.

It's an absolute travesty that this wonderful movie is not available in any form to those who might wish to see it. Warm, sensitive...this is almost as good as it gets. Seek this one out!

Why didn't someone tell me to bring 5 boxes of hankies for this one? I just watched (or rather re-watched after some 30 years) All The Way Home, (1963), based on the James Agee play "A Death In the Family". This story has seen other versions, but this one is by far the most outstanding.

Robert Preston was in his element as a loving husband and father of a young son, played endearingly by Michael Kearney. Jean Simmons gives yet another incredible performance as the wife, and Aline MacMahon shines as Aunt Hannah. She was an old woman in 1963, but still, how that woman could act. She was great in the 1930's, she was great in the 1960's. She's just great! It was also neat to see John Cullum the musical star in an early role in a non-musical. He was memorable as the brother who comes to tell the bad news, and not being able to face the wife, bursts into tears and hugs Aunt Hannah instead, and this is how the wife learns that her husband has died. An effective moment, not maudlin at all, but very natural. Do we always learn about the death of a relative in an ideal way? Not at all. I learned about the death of my mother after coming home from the grocery store, my arms filled with packages. It was like someone had kicked me in the stomach and the groceries suddenly felt like dead weight.

This film's actions take place in America during the World War One era, a time period shamelessly neglected by today's filmmakers. I guess they don't like its outright sentimentality, they'd rather foist gore and sex on us instead.

The film's credits are fantastic for the silent film fan, because the credits roll and are interspersed with shots of the young son and the father in the theater laughing at a Charlie Chaplin movie (sorry, Charlie fans, I didn't recognize which one it was but it had Charlie trying to get through a door in which a fat man's rear end was stuck). The "audience" is laughing like mad. It was eerily reminiscent of the last scene in the silent classic The Crowd (1928), only this film begins with such a scene. You hear a tinny piano in the background and it puts you immediately in the correct frame of mind to watch such a picture.

You are lulled into thinking you will be watching a simple tale of an early 20th century American family, but slowly you find yourself getting deeper and deeper into pathos and drama, a story filled with universal truths which are often hard for us to bear. A really wonderful film. It needs to be out on video or DVD.

Like some of the other commentators, I saw this movie when I was young -- perhaps 11 or 12. I was babysitting the boys next door in 1964, and I think it was on the old NBC Saturday Night at the Movies back in the 1960s. A few years later, I read James Agee's "A Death in the Family" and recognized it as the original source. But years, then decades, went by before I saw the film again.

I remember being entranced by the opening scenes, where I see a father taking his young son into a saloon ... doing the Charlie Chaplin dance ... then going home together. Years later (for me) I had buddies who rented rooms on Forest Street in Knoxville while they attended UT. They knew nothing of the book, nor how families there once lay down on cotton comforters on the grasse of the backside lawns to gaze at the stars. Heck, back in the late 1970s, I could even find in Knoxville the railroad yard and roundhouse mentioned in the book. Probably not now.

It's a wistful movie. Some photography and audio was a little too artful ... a departure from the main scenes. But, like everyone else, I cherished the scenes where Rufus spends time with his Aunt -- especially when he dons that outrageous cap.

You can learn things from movies. For me, an enduring lesson was gained when Robert Preston uses his hands to warm the sheets before his wife gets into bed. I did this for years on cold winter nights when I was a married man for 25 years ... and discovered, after divorce, how such a small act is still appreciated by others.

I also feel fortunate to have met Robert Preston in -- of all places -- the Richmond VA airport somewhere around 1980. Not your normal venue. But we were both trapped by planes diverted by a monster storm. We shared several drinks, he told hilarious stories -- but I stopped him (clearly) when I mentioned that All the Way Home was my favorite movie in which he was featured. "What? Not Music Man?" He feigned to be indignant ... but, perhaps because so few people even knew about this movie, or ever mentioned it to him, he realized I was sincere. He spoke of how much he enjoyed the story, made a few untoward comments about the director and Jean Simmons ... but he clearly liked the role he'd played. He was a very warm and charming and gracious man.

All the Way Home is a terrific movie ... so rare these days to see a film focused on family, love, and the ways youngsters see the world.