From my Facebook archives, December 17, 2014:
Primrose Path 1940. Ginger Rogers and Joel McCrea. Three word review: Very Highly Recommended!
This is relatively unusual amongst the 26 films of Ginger Rogers that we've seen so far in being a drama rather than a comedy. And it continues the unbroken string of highly enjoyable films of hers. Why her non-Astaire movies aren't more widely known and appreciated, I cannot say. (Is the fact that it's hard to get very many of them through Netflix a cause or a symptom?)
Ginger did Primrose Path a year after her ninth and last RKO pairing with Fred Astaire. And it was for this role, as a young girl from a poor family, that she decided to die her hair dark, after becoming so famous as a glamorous blonde. Then she went even darker for Lucky Partners, immediately afterwards--which was our previous Ginger film.
The supporting cast in this film is excellent. Particularly noteworthy to me were Henry Travers (the guardian angel from It's a Wonderful Life), who had many amusing lines, and Queenie Vassar, who nearly stole the show in her role as the mean grandma. And this was apparently her first film appearance--at 70 years old!
The scenes in her family's small house are more "play-like" then typical in films. That setting dominates the latter half of the film. The first half seems more open, with the location shots of the shantytown and the road and the beach, in particular.
Gregory LaCava is a fascinating director. I think that's the fourth film of his I've seen: My Man Godfrey, Stage Door, 5th Ave Girl, Primrose Path. All excellent, but each different.
Comments