Re: Best Origianl Story 1944
Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 8:42 am
I sat down and watched The Fighting Sullivans for the first time in more years than I care to remember after watching The Human Comedy, which I also hadn't seen in some time.
I watched The Human Comedy because I was perplexed by the notion that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were "reunited" for the remake, Ithaca, directed by Ryan. I didn't recall any scenes between the characters they play, and unless they've changed the story drastically, they don't. Hanks plays the deceased father whose narration introduces the characters, has a voice-over during a scene midway through and appears as a ghost in the film's fadeout. Ray Collins played the part in the original, Fay Bainter had Ryan's part as the mother. Bonnie Koloc, who played the mother in the 1984 Broadway musical version, was born in Waterloo, Iowa, the home of the Sullivans. She contributed a 1930s recording of the boys for the extras on the commemorative edition of The Fighting Sullivans .
As for the film itself, it plays like a B picture with a mostly unknown cast, but was actually an A picture that opened at the Roxy, New York's second largest theatre (after Radio city Music Hall), received excellent reviews and was a box-office hit. The antics of the kids become a bit tiresome, but not unwatchable. The characters of the grown boys other than Al, the youngest, who marries Catherine Mary (Anne Baxter), are not well developed, but the shocks, when they come, are winningly underplayed by Thomas Mitchell and Selena Royle as the parents. I'm not sure how much of the "story" is based on fact and how much is the writers' imagination, but one thing that we know from the extras is that the two oldest boys (born 1914 and 1916) enlisted in the Navy in 1937 and were discharged in 1941 before Peal Harbor. They re-enlisted after Pearl Harbor while the younger boys, born 1918, 1919 and 1922 respectively, enlisted for the first time. In the film they're all shown as having enlisted together for the first time with most of the action taking place in 1939 when the two older boys couldn't possibly have been there to participate in all the events leading up to Al and Catherine Mary's wedding and the birth of their son, Jimmie.
Best performance in the film? I'd have to say six-year-old Bobby Driscoll as young Al.
I watched The Human Comedy because I was perplexed by the notion that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were "reunited" for the remake, Ithaca, directed by Ryan. I didn't recall any scenes between the characters they play, and unless they've changed the story drastically, they don't. Hanks plays the deceased father whose narration introduces the characters, has a voice-over during a scene midway through and appears as a ghost in the film's fadeout. Ray Collins played the part in the original, Fay Bainter had Ryan's part as the mother. Bonnie Koloc, who played the mother in the 1984 Broadway musical version, was born in Waterloo, Iowa, the home of the Sullivans. She contributed a 1930s recording of the boys for the extras on the commemorative edition of The Fighting Sullivans .
As for the film itself, it plays like a B picture with a mostly unknown cast, but was actually an A picture that opened at the Roxy, New York's second largest theatre (after Radio city Music Hall), received excellent reviews and was a box-office hit. The antics of the kids become a bit tiresome, but not unwatchable. The characters of the grown boys other than Al, the youngest, who marries Catherine Mary (Anne Baxter), are not well developed, but the shocks, when they come, are winningly underplayed by Thomas Mitchell and Selena Royle as the parents. I'm not sure how much of the "story" is based on fact and how much is the writers' imagination, but one thing that we know from the extras is that the two oldest boys (born 1914 and 1916) enlisted in the Navy in 1937 and were discharged in 1941 before Peal Harbor. They re-enlisted after Pearl Harbor while the younger boys, born 1918, 1919 and 1922 respectively, enlisted for the first time. In the film they're all shown as having enlisted together for the first time with most of the action taking place in 1939 when the two older boys couldn't possibly have been there to participate in all the events leading up to Al and Catherine Mary's wedding and the birth of their son, Jimmie.
Best performance in the film? I'd have to say six-year-old Bobby Driscoll as young Al.