Jeanne Crain: A Year in the Life

Today marks the 84th birthday of the beautiful and charming Jeanne Crain, one of this blogger's favorite stars of the Golden Age. Instead of trying to cram an entire life and/or career into a few paragraphs, I decided to honor the birthday of this lovely lady by highlighting, via timeline, one of the more eventful years of her long and illustious life, 1945.

January Jeanne began production on State Fair, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about an Iowa farm family finding love and success at their annual state fair. Crain's Margy Frake would cement her place as 20th Century-Fox's resident sweet and pretty girl next door. As a result of the overwhelming success of State Fair, Crain was named a Star of Tomorrow by a Motion Picture Herald survey and received a new and more lucrative contract at Fox.

Spring Jeanne appeared as herself in the Fox 2 reel featurette All Star Bond Rally, a morale booster for the war effort. Also on board were Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Betty Grable.

May Production began on the Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, in which Jeanne played second lead to star Gene Tierney. The film reportedly garnered Fox it's highest box office receipts to that date and raised even further Crain's rank at the studio.

August Principal production concluded on Leave Her to Heaven. On August 29, State Fair made it's world premiere in Des Moines, Iowa, with the New York opening the following week.

September Immediately after the week of premieres for State Fair, young Crain began production on Centennial Summer, a musical with songs by Jerome Kern. Fox wanted to ride the coattails of popularity for period family musicals established the previous year by Meet Me in St. Louis over at MGM. Along with Cornel Wilde and Linda Darnell, Crain starred in a musical film in which none of the primary leads knew how to sing!(they were all dubbed).

November Principal filming wrapped on Centennial Summer. Crain was then seriously discussed by top Fox brass for the title role in the upcoming My Darling Clementine. But in a memo to the films director John Ford, studio head Darryl Zanuck declared that the minor role was much too small for "the biggest box office attraction on the lot" at that time. As a matter of fact, Crain's fan mail during this period was second only to Betty Grable, whose fan base was still large but whose box office appeal was slipping.

December Leave Her to Heaven premiered at Christmastime. About a week later on New Years Eve, Jeanne married Paul Brinkman, an Errol Flynn look-alike who was a minor actor under the name Paul Brooks at RKO. Crain's mother, Loretta was completely against the union, and reportedly was a source of strain on the marriage, which produced seven children.

January, 1946 After a short honeymoon in Death Valley, Jeanne returned home to begin production on what would be her first big starring moment, Margie, where for the first time she carried a picture by herself. According to the films director, Henry King, Crain appeared so youthful during production, that he replaced the University of Nevada co-eds, hired to surround the star, with girls from local Reno High School.

Jeanne Crain continued to make her mark in Hollywood, eventually even earning an Oscar nomination for her role in the racially charged drama Pinky in 1949. There were bigger, more ostentatious stars than Crain but her comely features, shapely figure and winning smile will forever endear her to those of us who sometimes enjoy a little less flamboyance. I realize that 13 months were actually discussed in relation to this portion of Miss Crain's life and career but somehow the header, Jeanne Crain: Thirteen Months in the Life, just didn't roll off the tongue. Call it literary license.

Review: High Sierra

High Sierra (1941) is the film that Humphrey Bogart fan's can thank for jump starting his career, because it is that film that pushed him closer to stardom and with The Maltese Falcon, made later that same year, he cemented it. Trudging along as a black hearted gangster or second lead at Warner Brothers for years had taken its toll, and Bogie lobbied hard for the part of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle. First offered to Paul Muni, then, after Muni turned it down, to George Raft, the role finally went to the persistent Bogart. Although he received second billing after Ida Lupino, it would be the last time in his career that he would see that slot.

High Sierra is a Warners gangster picture for sure. Many of the usual suspects who show up for the studio's often visited genre are here as well, gun-toting, tough-talking Barton MacLane for instance. The film is filled with the hard boiled dialogue of the day (more "saps", "rackets" and "sisters" than you can shake a stick at), but what makes Sierra different is the character of "Mad Dog" Earle and Bogart's portrayal of him. The actor brings a depth and sensitivity to Earle that is not usually seen in standard gangster fare. Unlike other "bad guys" of filmdom, like Gable's "Blackie" Gallagher in Manhattan Melodrama (1934) or Cagney's Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), who show signs of decency to help out their upstanding friends, but still enjoy their chosen path in life, Bogart's Earle is three dimensional. Although a thief and a killer, at his core are traces of the Indiana farm boy he left behind many years ago, traces that want to resurface in the form of a relationship with good girl Joan Leslie. Traces that do resurface in the affection for a stray dog, who eventually leads to his downfall.

"Mad Dog" Earle is a convict whose pardon from prison has been bought by gang boss Big Mac (Donald MacBride), so that Earle, an experienced thief, can lead a major jewel heist Mac has planned. Along the way he meets two women. The innocent and soft-spoken cripple, Velma (Joan Leslie, in her first significant role), and hard-on-the-outside but soft-on-the-inside moll, Marie (Ida Lupino). Often an underrated actress, Lupino brings tender pathos as the dime a dance girl turned gangster gal. Her turn in High Sierra raised her stock at Warner Brothers, though she never achieved the fame of several of her counterparts at the studio (she described herself as "a poor man's Bette Davis"). The sympathy felt for both her Marie and Bogart's "Mad Dog" are a testament to both the actors as well as the screenplay. Others in the cast were Arthur Kennedy, Alan Curtis and young Cornel Wilde, in one of his earliest roles.

On the strength of his work as the screenplays co-writer, John Huston was given directorial duty on the upcoming The Maltese Falcon, where he forged a long lasting personal and professional relationship with Bogart. They continued their collaboration with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen among other films. Warner's resident action director Raoul Walsh, who directed the film, would remake it with a Western theme in 1948 as Colorado Territory and in 1955 yet another remake was produced as I Died a Thousand Times.

Leave Her To Heaven: Heaven Help Her!

OK, if you've never seen 20th Century-Fox's Leave Her To Heaven (1945) what are the best words to try and describe it to you. Glossy, colorful, sinister, noir (yes, a colorful noir), gripping, Oscar nominated. I know! GENE TIERNEY. This is without a doubt Gene Tierney's movie. Sure Cornel Wilde is her co-star and the male lead but Fox could have just as well put Dana Andrews or any of their other male contract players in the role and the film would still be Tierney's (Tyrone Power would probably be the exception) but that's as it should be. The story revolves around Tierney's character Ellen Berent, an extremely beautiful but extremely controlling, some would say psychotic woman who has her sites set on writer Wilde.

Coming on the heels of her big breakthrough role in Laura (1944), Tierney garnered her only Academy Award nomination for the role (she lost to Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce). The lush sets, both interior and exterior are gorgeous, shot in brilliant Technicolor, and the supporting cast is tops including Jeanne Crain as Tierney's pretty, down to earth sister, Vincent Price as spurned sweetheart/district attorney and Darryl Hickman as Wilde's invalid brother who falls victim to Tierney's black, twisted view of devotion to her husband.