''From This Day Forward'' is a 1946 American
drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
film directed by
John Berry and starring
Joan Fontaine,
Mark Stevens and
Rosemary DeCamp. It was produced and distributed by
RKO Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the major film studios, "Big Five" film studios of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood's Clas ...
.
Plot
Army sergeant Bill Cummings (
Mark Stevens) is about to be discharged after service in World War II. He was a blue collar worker in civilian life and is seeking employment. As he fills out forms and speaks to personnel at the
United States Employment Service, he thinks back on the life events that brought him to this point.
Flashbacks show him at various times in his prewar life. He is shown meeting and marrying his wife Susan (
Joan Fontaine) in 1938. Other flashbacks describe their hardscrabble life in a poor neighborhood of New York City during the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
. He and various relatives are shown as frequently unemployed and having difficulty making a living.
He and Susan's financial ups and downs are depicted, as are the humiliation of being supported by Susan's bookstore clerking job, and unfairly being prosecuted as a pornographer.
At the conclusion of the film, he is shown being referred to a badly needed job interview, and we learn that Susan is pregnant.
Cast
*
Joan Fontaine as Susan Cummings
*
Mark Stevens as Bill Cummings
*
Rosemary DeCamp as Martha Beesley
*
Harry Morgan as Hank Beesley
*
Wally Brown
Wallace Edgar Brown (October 8, 1904 – November 13, 1961) was an American actor and comedian. In the 1940s, he performed as the comic partner of Alan Carney.
Early years
Wallace Edgar Brown was born in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of Her ...
as Jake Beesley
*
Arline Judge
Margaret Arline Judge (February 21, 1912 – February 7, 1974) was an American actress and singer who worked mostly in low-budget B movies, but gained some fame for habitually marrying, including two brothers. Judge specialized in playing fai ...
as Margie Beesley
* Renny McEvoy as Charlie Beesley
*
Bobby Driscoll
Robert Cletus Driscoll (March 3, 1937 – March 30, 1968) was an American actor who performed on film and television from 1943 to 1960. He starred in some of the The Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios' best-known live-action pict ...
as Timmy Beesley
*
Mary Treen
Mary Treen (born Mary Louise Summers; March 27, 1907 – July 20, 1989) was an American film and television actress. A minor actress for much of her career, she managed to secure a plain, unassuming niche for herself in dozens of movies and t ...
as Alice Beesley
*
Queenie Smith as Mrs. Beesley
* Doreen McCann as Barbara Beesley
*
Erskine Sanford as Mr. Higgler
* Theodore Newton as Mr. Brewer
* Charles Wagenheim as Hoffman
* unbilled players include
Ellen Corby
Ellen Hansen Corby (June 3, 1911 – April 14, 1999) was an American actress and screenwriter. She played the role of List of The Waltons characters#Esther Walton, Esther "Grandma" Walton on the Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS television ...
,
Ralph Dunn,
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump; July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter.
Edwards began his career in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon began writing screenplays and radio scripts ...
,
Milton Kibbee,
Tommy Noonan and
Moroni Olsen
Political context
Called "the most expressively optimistic film of the postwar Left" and "literally working-class cinema",
the screenplay was adapted from the 1936 novel "All Brides are Beautiful" by working-class immigrant novelist
Thomas Bell. Director Berry and screenwriter
Hugo Butler would both be caught in the
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist was the mid-20th century banning of suspected Communists from working in the United States entertainment industry. The blacklisting, blacklist began at the onset of the Cold War and Red Scare#Second Red Scare (1947–1957 ...
, and the uncredited writer Odets appeared as a
HUAC
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty an ...
friendly witness.
Reception
The ''New York Times'' reviewer called the film "a plotless succession of episodes," and said "there may be some purpose in all this but we couldn't quite make it out—unless it is simply to demonstrate that unemployment is a very bad thing." The critic said that Fontaine's performance as a Bronx housewife was unconvincing.
''Variety'' said the flashbacks make "it sometimes difficult to follow as a whole, but there can be no quarrel with the merit of presentation and acting of the individual sequences."
A ''
Cincinnati Enquirer
''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' is a morning daily newspaper published by Gannett in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. First published in 1841, the ''Enquirer'' is the last remaining daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, altho ...
'' reviewer praised the performances and the film's "extraordinarily realistic touches," though he noted a "somewhat involved story-telling method."
''Time Out Film Guide'' said that "such strands as post-war optimism, the impact of neo-realism, the socialist convictions of director and chief writer (Butler), both blacklist-bound, can easily be picked out. But as ever when Hollywood tried to engage with everyday realities, the trade off came in glamourisation - syrupy music, Fontaine (as Stevens' wife) never looking less than a film star, and an idea of poverty that must have irritated many audiences on home ground, never mind in Europe."
Reception
The film made a profit of $362,000.
[Richard B. Jewell, ''Slow Fade to Black: The Decline of RKO Radio Pictures'', Uni of California, 2016]
Radio adaptation
''From This Day Forward'' was presented on ''
Lux Radio Theatre
''Lux Radio Theatre'', sometimes spelled ''Lux Radio Theater'', a old-time radio, classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the Blue Network, NBC Blue Network (1934–35) (owned by the National Broadcasting Company, later predecessor of A ...
'' October 28, 1946. Fontaine and Stevens reprised their roles in the adaptation.
[ ]
References
External links
*
Turner Classic Movies page
{{Garson Kanin
1946 films
Films directed by John Berry
RKO Pictures films
Films based on American novels
Films set in the Bronx
Films scored by Leigh Harline
American drama films
1946 drama films
American black-and-white films
1940s American films