So Red the Rose

Those of you, like me, who think Randolph Scott should have been cast in Gone With the Wind, need to check out So Red the Rose. It's so similar to Margaret Mitchell's work, it's a wonder someone didn't sue for plagiarism. Margaret Sullavan plays the flirty Southern belle without substance. She has a huge crush on classy, upstanding Randolph Scott. Her father, Walter Connolly, is larger than life and prizes their land and plantation. When the Civil War starts, she learns about life and survival, what's really important, and who she really loves. Sound familiar?

No, this movie isn't in Technicolor, there's no tearjerker theme, and the running time is half that of the famous epic, but it's still very similar. I'm not a Margaret Sullavan fan, but she's just fine in this role. Randolph Scott is, of course, perfect. Walter Connolly, a highly underrated actor with too brief a career, added to the believability of the film. If you love Gone With the Wind, I really wouldn't recommend renting this version. It won't change your mind, since it's obviously a lesser quality movie. But if you always feel frustrated every time you hear Clark Gable speak without a Southern accent, this movie will help vindicate you.

Based on a novel by southern author Starke Young, So Red The Rose preceded that other southern perspective Civil War novel Gone With The Wind into both print and cinema. There are many reasons why this film never became the classic that Gone With The Wind became, but at least it didn't glorify the Ku Klux Klan like Birth Of A Nation.

The reason why Gone With The Wind enthralled so many people is that it both sustained interest for an almost four hour running time and created an incredible amount of interesting supporting characters, the movie and novel is definitely not just about the four leads. So Red The Rose never was able to do that and it's the difference between a reasonably good film and a screen classic.

The action centers around the Bedford family of Mississippi and it opens just before the firing on Fort Sumter. Walter Connolly is the head of the Bedford clan and wife Janet Beecher, daughter Margaret Sullavan, sons Harry Ellerbe and Dickie Moore. Ellerbe has a guest in Texas boy Robert Cummings. And there's distant cousin Randolph Scott, distant enough for Margaret Sullavan to get interested in. Remember the President and First Lady at the time also had the same last name and were fifth cousins before they married.

Scott's part is a combination of elements of both Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes. Like Butler he's reluctant to get involved in the war, but not for Butler's practical reasons. He has friends and relatives in the north and does not relish the idea of a Civil War like Wilkes. But later after the war hits home he rallies to the Confederacy.

The treatment of the slavery issue is what makes most people dislike So Red The Rose and Margaret Sullavan's scene where she talks the slaves into not rebelling and leaving the old plantation. Listen carefully to what she does say if you watch the film. She concedes absolutely that slavery is at an end, but when Sullavan argues and quite persuasively, you're free as soon as the Union Army arrives to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, but free to do what? It's not like the promised land immediately arrives, freedom means that you are free to work for yourself or for wages. She raises issues that the USA was unable to grapple with during Reconstruction for a whole lot of reasons. In fact the plight of the slaves is dealt with more in So Red The Rose than in Gone With The Wind and better dealt with than in Birth Of A Nation.

In a recent book on Margaret Sullavan author Lawrence Quirk said that Sullavan at one time or another tried to get things going with Randolph Scott, Bob Cummings, Charles Starrett and Johnny Downs who were all in the cast. Rumors were flying so about what was happening off the set that Sullavan's then husband William Wyler asked his colleague King Vidor to step in to which Vidor politely and firmly decided he was not getting involved in any cast member's personal business. Sullavan could be difficult to work with.

She also was not crazy about Randolph Scott either as actor or the fact he declined her offers and maybe one influenced the other. Now Scott was not as good here as the Randy Scott we knew later on in his classic westerns, but as a Virginia born southerner he fit his role fine. Margaret decried his lack of historical knowledge, but from what I've heard about Randolph Scott his favorite reading was the financial page in the newspaper. He invested shrewdly and became one of the wealthiest actors in Hollywood.

So Red The Rose tanked at the box office leading cynical Paramount executives to call it So Red The Ink. The movie-going public just wasn't ready for a Civil War epic. But seen today it isn't as bad as its reputation would have it.

I have wanted to see this film since I was a teenager. It took twenty years to see it and it was not worth the wait. The plot lacked depth and there was not any real character development. The best thing about the movie was Margaret Sullivan. She put in a good performance on something that was dry and lacked life. Despite saying this, the film deserves to be available to audiences through VHS or DVD or late night TV viewing. All classics should be there for the public to enjoy or hate. It seems to have remained a film almost no one has seen due to the racial images and messages portrayed in the film. However, many viewers are adults and know they are watching a film from the 1930s.

As a huge fan of director King Vidor's work, and of the genre, I was eager to see SO RED THE ROSE. It took me years to find this obscure film, and now I understand why.

The worst and most glaring flaw is the superficial character development throughout. I never once cared about the romance presented in this Civil War melodrama. There is no depth or soul to this production. The cinematography, score, costumes, and set design all seem like a TV production from the 1950s and not the glossy prestige film this should have been.

There are no moments of poetic brilliance, nothing profound in the script, and the slave stereotypes are offensive even by the standards of the time. I have a hard time believing King Vidor directed this mess, because his trademark sensitivity, intelligence, and masterful touches are completely absent from the production.

As far as good Civil War romances go, I think you know which one to watch, but may I also recommend OPERATOR 13 with Marion Davies and Gary Cooper. That is the obscure classic you are looking for.

So Red the Rose is yet another civil war drama, this time from Paramount, and starring Margaret Sullavan, Randolph Scott, Elizabeth Patterson, Janet Beecher, Walter Connolly, and Robert Cummings. I guess I never realized that Cummings started out so early, and in small roles. He's not very good.

This family, the Bedfords, has it a little tougher than the Tara group, though what went on in GWTW was pretty harrowing. This film focuses on the loss of family members, and slaves rebelling, although the family is shown here as being loving and supportive.

Their treatment is very typical Hollywood, though it is true that some slaves were well treated, learned to read, etc., which is no justification for it. But they want their freedom, and they hear it's coming. On the day the rebellion was filmed, 500 African Americans were needed. So it was filmed during a city-wide "Maid's Day Off" in Los Angeles.

What Sullavan says to the slaves who want to quit is interesting and actually realistic. Slavery, she says, is at an end, and you'll be free. But what are you free to do? Are you promised land? Freedom means you work for wages or for yourself.

This actually is a good handle on the issues faced during Reconstruction. This topic is not shied away from in "So Red the Rose" at all.

In the beginning, I almost turned this off because it was so over the top. Margaret Sullavan as Vallette flounces around in what looks like a parody of an antebellum gown. And the accents - yikes. Cummings is a friend of Vallette's brother - his performance is just too big.

Randolph Scott plays a distant cousin who objects to the war and refuses to fight. Vallette is in love with him, but he is focused on other things.

All in all, a darker film, though one is less attached to the characters as we are in Gone with the Wind. What I like about both Wind and Rose is that it shows that the way of life of southerners changed within minutes. And they weren't prepared for what it meant.