''Confidentially Connie'' is a 1953 American
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a sub-genre of comedy and Romance novel, romance fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount all obstacles. Ro ...
film directed by
Edward Buzzell
Edward Buzzell (November 13, 1895 – January 11, 1985) was an American film actor and director whose credits include ''Child of Manhattan (film), Child of Manhattan'' (1933); ''Honolulu (1939 film), Honolulu'' (1939); the Marx Brothers fil ...
. It stars
Van Johnson
Charles Van Dell Johnson (August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American actor and dancer. He had a prolific career in film, television, theatre and radio, which spanned over 50 years, from 1940 to 1992. He was a major star at Metr ...
as a dedicated but poorly paid college professor,
Janet Leigh
Jeanette Helen Morrison (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004), known professionally as Janet Leigh, was an American actress. Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, Leigh was discovered at 18 by actress Norma Shearer, who helped he ...
as his pregnant wife, and
Louis Calhern
Carl Henry Vogt (February 19, 1895 – May 12, 1956), known by his stage name Louis Calhern, was an American actor. Described as a “star leading man of the theater and a star character actor of the screen,” he appeared in over 100 roles ...
as Johnson's father, whose schemes to get his son to return to the family ranch in Texas widen the previously existing gulf between father and son when they deprive him of a desirable promotion and a much needed raise.
Plot
Maine
Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
housewife Connie Bedloe is
pregnant
Pregnancy is the time during which one or more offspring gestation, gestates inside a woman's uterus. A multiple birth, multiple pregnancy involves more than one offspring, such as with twins.
Conception (biology), Conception usually occurs ...
, but the family's limited income from her husband Joe's college teaching job means that they can't buy the
meat
Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...
her obstetrician recommends. Connie gives up smoking to be able to afford lamb chops. Joe does not buy her explanation that she is doing this because she is pregnant, because the obstetrician's office is “like a forest fire.” He is not providing for her: He talks about going back to his father's cattle ranch, the “second biggest in Texas,” despite his father's interfering ways. The daughter of a teacher, Connie knew what she was getting into. However, she does want the apolitical Joe to lobby for a new job opening. He makes a mess of it, and they begin an ongoing debate: Go to the ranch, or stay in the home they love and raise a child without the security money can bring.
Joe's father, Opie, comes to visit, determined to persuade Joe to move the family back to the ranch. A dedicated and inspiring teacher, Joe is wounded by his father's contempt for his work. (Teaching is fit only for women who can't find husbands.) He eloquently defends the work of American teachers, asking, rhetorically, why teachers are paid less than TV repairmen.
Opie is delighted to learn that Connie is pregnant and horrified to see her eating fish. Believing that pregnant women “gotta have meat,” he arranges for the local butcher, Spangenberg, to cut his prices in half, to 69 cents a pound, (with Opie paying the difference) so that Connie can have the meat she needs. Connie sees through Opie immediately, but gives in, using a gigantic steak to impress the Dean and others. At the party, the guests find out that the butcher sold the steak to Opie at half price. The next day, they all head to Spangenberg's: A
price war
A price war is a form of market competition in which companies within an industry engage in aggressive pricing activity "characterized by the repeated cutting of prices below those of competitors". This leads to a cycle, where each competitor att ...
ensues in town. Seeing the way the faculty react—one professor says he has not seen a rib roast since 1948–Opie starts to rethink his attitude toward teachers.
When Connie tells Opie that Joe will stay if he gets the promotion, Opie lies to the Dean, telling him his son plans to leave at end of term. The promotion goes to another man, who calls Joe to share the news. It looks as if Opie has won, but Spangenberg storms in, begging Opie to make up the losses of the other butchers. Joe is angry, but Connie defends Opie for putting meat on their table. They agree to go to the ranch, The next morning a group of students comes with a going away present. One of them, a football player, gives an eloquent speech thanking Joe, who is touched—and puzzled. They just decided. The students tell how they went to the Dean, to complain. He told them he would have given the job to Joe, but Opie said his son was leaving. Joe tells his students that he and Connie will be there until they are retired. Opie packs to leave.
At a special meeting, the Dean announces a generous anonymous endowment that will fund $1,000 a year in raises for all the teachers. Joe is furious. He knows Opie is behind it. The Dean tries to calm him, speaking seriously about the difference that $1,000 ($10,000 today) can make in the life of a family: “the difference between living in dignity and living on the ragged edge…It can turn a man sour. It can make him small, and petty, and mean. I know.”
Joe arrives at the train station, ready for a fight, as Opie's train is boarding. Opie tells Joe that he set up the endowment after seeing what happened during the meat price war. He was horrified that people as important as teachers were treating meat like pure gold. Yes, he has changed. It took some time. The train leaves.
Cut to the ranch. Opie goes to welcome Joe, Connie and his grandson, Opie T. (for, T-bone.) Bedloe, here for their regular summer vacation at the ranch. “I came along just in time,” Opie says. “Your name might have been Sardine.”
Cast
*
Van Johnson
Charles Van Dell Johnson (August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American actor and dancer. He had a prolific career in film, television, theatre and radio, which spanned over 50 years, from 1940 to 1992. He was a major star at Metr ...
as Joe Bedloe
*
Janet Leigh
Jeanette Helen Morrison (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004), known professionally as Janet Leigh, was an American actress. Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, Leigh was discovered at 18 by actress Norma Shearer, who helped he ...
as Connie Bedloe
*
Louis Calhern
Carl Henry Vogt (February 19, 1895 – May 12, 1956), known by his stage name Louis Calhern, was an American actor. Described as a “star leading man of the theater and a star character actor of the screen,” he appeared in over 100 roles ...
as Opie Bedloe
*
Walter Slezak
Walter Slezak (; 3 May 1902 – 21 April 1983) was an Austrian-born film and stage actor active between 1922 and 1976. He mainly appeared in German films before migrating to the United States in 1930 and performing in numerous Hollywood productio ...
as Emil Spangenberg, Butcher
*
Gene Lockhart
Edwin Eugene Lockhart (July 18, 1891 – March 31, 1957)["Gene Lockhart"](_blank)
''The ...
as Dean Edward E. Magruder
*
Marilyn Erskine as Phyllis Archibald
*
Hayden Rorke
William Henry Rorke (October 23, 1910 – August 19, 1987), known professionally as Hayden Rorke, was an American actor best known for playing Colonel Alfred E. Bellows on the 1960s American sitcom ''I Dream of Jeannie''.
Early life
Rorke was b ...
as Prof. Simmonds
*
Robert Burton as Dr. Willis Shoop
*
Kathleen Lockhart as Mrs. Martha Magruder
*
Arthur Space
Charles Arthur Space (October 12, 1908 – January 13, 1983) was an American film, television and stage actor. Today's audiences know him as the eccentric inventor opposite Laurel and Hardy in '' The Big Noise'' (1944), and as veterinarian Doc W ...
as Prof. Archie Archibald
*
Barbara Ruick as Barbara
* June Whitley Taylor as Betty Simmons
*
Emory Parnell
Emory Parnell (December 29, 1892 – June 22, 1979) was an American vaudeville performer and actor who appeared in over 250 films in his 36-year career.
Early years
Parnell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He spent eight months in the Arct ...
as Mr. Daveney
*
Kathleen O'Malley
Mary Kathleen O'Malley (March 31, 1924 – February 25, 2019) was an American film and television actress, who was the daughter of vaudevillian and actor Pat O'Malley. Her screen debut came during the silent film, silent film era as a thirteen ...
as Nurse
*
Byron Foulger
Byron Kay Foulger (August 27, 1898 – April 4, 1970) was an American character actor who over a 50-year career performed in hundreds of stage, film, and television productions.
Early years
Born in Ogden, Utah, Byron was the second of four ...
as Prof. Rosenberg
*
Kathleen Freeman
Kathleen Freeman (February 17, 1923August 23, 2001) was an American actress. In a career that spanned more than 50 years, she portrayed acerbic maids, secretaries, teachers, busybodies, nurses, and battle-axe neighbors and relatives, almost i ...
as Mother of Twins
*
Mae Clarke
Mae Clarke (born Violet Mary Klotz; August 16, 1910 – April 29, 1992) was an American actress. She is widely remembered for playing Henry Frankenstein's bride Elizabeth, who is chased by Boris Karloff in ''Frankenstein'', and for being o ...
as Happy Shopper
Reception
According to MGM records the film made $574,000 in the US and Canada and $159,000 elsewhere, resulting in a loss of $51,000.
In May 1953, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' reported several times on a list created by the Schools Motion Picture Committee, “a voluntary organization composed of teachers and parents of pupils in local public and private elementary and high schools” of films suitable for children 8 to 14 years old. ''Confidentially Connie'' was on the list.
References
External links
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{{Edward Buzzell
1953 films
1953 comedy films
American comedy films
American black-and-white films
1950s English-language films
Films directed by Edward Buzzell
Films scored by David Rose (songwriter)
Films set in Maine
Films set in Texas
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
American pregnancy films
1950s pregnancy films
1950s American films
English-language comedy films