''From This Day Forward'' is a 1946 American
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
film directed by
John Berry, starring
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared ...
and
Mark Stevens.
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
The United States Employment Service (USES) is an agency of the federal government of the United States responsible for "assisting coordination of the State public employment services in providing labor exchange and job finding assistance to job s ...
, 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
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared ...
) in 1938. Other flashbacks describe their hardscrabble life in a poor neighborhood of New York City during the
Great Depression. 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
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared ...
as Susan Cummings
*
Mark Stevens as Bill Cummings
*
Rosemary DeCamp
Rosemary Shirley DeCamp (November 14, 1910 – February 20, 2001) was an American radio, film, and television actress.
Life and career
Early life
Rosemary Shirley DeCamp was born in Prescott, Yavapai, Arizona on November 14, 1910 to William ...
as Martha Beesley
*
Harry Morgan
Harry Morgan (born Harry Bratsberg; April 10, 1915 – December 7, 2011) was an American actor and director whose television and film career spanned six decades. Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both ''December Bride'' (1954–1959 ...
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 singer who worked mostly in low-budget B movies, but gained some fame for habitually marrying.
Early years
Arline Judge was born in Bridgeport, Connect ...
as Margie Beesley
* Renny McEvoy as Charlie Beesley
*
Bobby Driscoll
Robert Cletus Driscoll (March 3, 1937 – March 30, 1968) was an American actor known for his film and television performances from 1943 to 1960. He starred in some of the Walt Disney Studios' best-known live-action pictures of that period ...
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 the Hollywood of the 1 ...
as Alice Beesley
*
Queenie Smith
Queenie Smith (September 8, 1898 – August 5, 1978) was an American stage, television, and film actress.
Life and career
Smith was born in Texas. Her family moved from Texas to New York shortly before Smith began studying at the Metropol ...
as Mrs. Beesley
* Doreen McCann as Barbara Beesley
*
Erskine Sanford
Erskine Sanford (November 19, 1885 – July 7, 1969) was an American actor on the stage, radio and motion pictures. Long associated with the Theatre Guild, he later joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre company and appeared in several of Welles ...
as Mr. Higgler
* unbilled players include
Ellen Corby,
Ralph Dunn
Ralph Dunn (May 23, 1900 – February 19, 1968) was an American film, television, and stage actor.
Early years
Dunn was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania. His father was a veterinarian for the U.S. Army during World War I, and his mother ...
,
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump; July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor.
Edwards began his career in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon began writing screenplays and radio s ...
,
Milton Kibbee
Milton Kibbee (January 27, 1896 – April 17, 1970) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 360 films between 1933 and 1953. He was the brother of actor Guy Kibbee and his daughter was actress Lois Kibbee. He died in Simi Vall ...
,
Tommy Noonan
Tommy Noonan (born Thomas Noone; April 29, 1921 – April 24, 1968) was a comedy genre film performer, screenwriter and producer. He acted in a number of high-profile films as well as B movies from the 1940s through the 1960s, and he is best ...
and
Moroni Olsen
Moroni Olsen (June 27, 1889November 22, 1954) was an American actor.
Life and career
Olsen was born in Ogden, Utah to Latter-day Saint parents Edward Arenholt Olsen and Martha ( Hoverholst) Olsen, who named him after the Moroni found in the ...
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
Hugo Dansey Butler (4 May 1914 – 7 January 1968) was a Canadian-born screenwriter working in Hollywood who was blacklisted by the film studios in the 1950s.
Biography
Born on 4 May 1914 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, his father, Frank Russel ...
would both be caught in the
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying empl ...
, and the uncredited writer Odets appeared as a
HUAC 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, alt ...
'' 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 classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network (1934–35) (owned by the National Broadcasting Company, later predecessor of American Broadcasting Company ...
'' 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