Only rarely would the marriage film try to tell audiences directly, with no subtext, something that married couples know but not everyone wanted articulated: marriage and romantic love are not the same thing. David Lean’s 1949 British movie The Passionate Friends (called in the United States One Woman’s Story) clearly states that point. Based on a novel by H. G. Wells, the story concerns the inevitable triangle of wife, husband, lover. Director Lean superbly manipulates time, presenting a movie involving flashbacks, memories, and present tense—all effectively mixed—to demonstrate how an unresolved love from the past can dominate a woman’s emotions. The story is the tale of a young couple who fall in love in 1930: Ann Todd and Trevor Howard. “Will you always love me, Mary?” he asks. “Of course,” she confidently replies. “I shall never love anyone as much as I do you.” Later, however, she throws in a little P.S. “I want to belong to myself.” It’s not so much that she doesn’t want to belong to him, but more specifically that she doesn’t want to be owned by her passion for him. She ditches him for Claude Rains, an older, richer, and quieter love. She’s a modern variation of the Cathy character from Wuthering Heights: she makes the choice of security, comfort, and station, eschewing the wilder passion of the Heathcliff option.
Nearly a decade later, in 1939, Todd and Rains (now wed) attend a New Year’s Eve ball at which Howard and his new girlfriend are also present. Todd and Howard are drawn together but behave politely and introduce their mates to each other. Howard’s girl asks him about Todd’s husband. Howard explains that Rains is a banker, and terribly rich, and that was “the sort of life Mary wanted.” Predictably, however, while Rains is conveniently away on one of those numerous business trips rich men make so their wives can get into trouble, Todd and Howard begin a passionate affair, rekindling their youthful love. Ultimately, they are found out when they don’t go to the theater to see a musical—ironically called First Love. When Rains goes to check up on them, he hears the merry song lyrics “East love or west love, my first love’s the best love.” Afterwards, the three face off. Rains is tough. Todd is upset. Howard is direct and honest. In other words, Rains dominates, Todd vacillates, and Howard tries to do the right thing. The next day, Howard receives a note from Todd breaking off their relationship (for the second time). Howard visits Rains to argue over it, and it is in this scene that an onscreen articulation about marriage vs. romance occurs. Rains boldly, strongly, irritably tells Howard to go away and give up on Todd:
You say you love Mary. You may love her, but you don’t know her as I do. Our marriage has been very successful until now. It’s based on freedom … and understanding … and a very deep affection. It’s a marriage both Mary and I wanted. Your love is the romantic kind. The kind that makes big demands. Nearness … longing … fulfillment … and priority over everything else. That isn’t the kind Mary really wants, although you almost persuaded her it was. Don’t you see that you two together are dangerous?
Rains firmly explains that the romantic dream of marriage must be abandoned for any marriage to work. Although Howard says, “It’s a cold, bloodless, banker’s point of view,” he nevertheless does go away and make a happy marriage of the Rains/Todd type for himself. When Todd and Howard are accidentally yet again united years later, after World War II, they spend a platonic afternoon on a picnic, climbing the Alps, and both agree they are now happier, better people. (Howard has married the woman he’d brought to the New Year’s ball, and they have a son and a daughter.) Todd and Howard part friends.
Ann Todd wants wealth and security from marriage in The Passionate Friends, so she marries Claude Rains … (Photo Credit 2.3)
… but she can’t resist temptation when her former lover, Trevor Howard, re-enters her life. (Photo Credit 2.4)
In The Passionate Friends lies the problem of the marriage movie: like Todd and Howard, it has to abandon the romantic dream. Thus it becomes a “cold and bloodless banker’s” event, and moviegoers are human beings who want a little heat, a little passion, a little escape, and a lot of romantic drama. It’s what they pay for, and what they have to have. They want to hear the words “I shall never love anyone the way I do you” and have it mean something. They want the eternal flame … for ninety minutes. They want to believe the Gypsy.6
Made for Each Other (1939), directed by John Cromwell and starring James Stewart and Carole Lombard, is the very best classic example of the sound-era, studio-made, pure marriage movie, designed to be “realistic.”7 It can clearly be defined as an “I do!” version of a story that has no purpose other than entertaining audiences with a story focused totally on marriage. The union of its protagonists, Jane and John Mason, is the film’s central event. All story elements are linked directly to it. Made for Each Other is not a film about how society views the Masons’ marriage, or how war has separated them, or how they have worked together side by side to discover radium and win the Nobel Prize. It’s just a story about their marriage. Episode by episode, it presents viewers with the ordinary things that can grind a young couple down: money problems, in-law interference, boredom and disappointment, dashed dreams, parenthood, bad luck, and the inevitable unpaid-for furniture.
Made for Each Other, however, was sold as a love story, not as a story of marriage. Across the top of a full-page ad in Movie Mirror in April 1939 runs the word “HEARTBREAK!” The copy says: “The heartbreak of two young people in love … facing the world with song in their hearts … Laughter … Melodrama … and Carole Lombard in a brilliant transition from comedienne to dramatic star!” Marriage is not mentioned. The illustration presents Stewart and Lombard kissing in profile, looking very glamorous and sexy. Lombard is the bigger star and is given pride of place in the copy. Oh, and down in a corner is a small photo of a baby with a toy. No one’s eye is directed there.
At first glance—and certainly at this point in their careers—Stewart and Lombard might seem to be inappropriately paired. Lombard, who was married to Clark Gable, had been in movies since 1924.8 She was every inch a star. Stewart had been in movies for only four years, and although he had moved into top billing and had sixteen films in the can, he was not yet the huge star he was going to become and certainly not the legend we know him as today.9 (Stewart and Lombard made only this one film together.) Stewart in retrospect was better matched with Jean Arthur, a down-to-earth gal, not a sophisticate, or with June Allyson, his all-American female counterpart. At this stage of his career, prior to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,10 The Philadelphia Story (1940), or any of the movies of his postwar career, Stewart seems too young for Lombard, too innocent. Lombard (at the peak of her glamour) appears much more sophisticated and experienced. (Alas, she didn’t age onscreen for us; she died in an air crash in 1942.) Lombard had arrived at this 1939 established presence from a long line of other kinds of roles. Like most stars in old Hollywood, she had labored to find her most believable onscreen persona. Although today we may not think of her as the right person to play “little wife” roles, she had actually been previously cast that way in such movies as Virtue (1932), No Man of Her Own (1932), and Swing High, Swing Low (1937). (One of the reasons she didn’t get stuck in the category was that her wifely roles usually had a little wrinkle in them. And that was how Hollywood figured out that Lombard was best cast as a screwball: the little wrinkle was the part she did best.)11
The pairing of Lombard and Stewart in Made for Each Other nevertheless works precisely because of their clashing styles. The audience can look at them and wonder why they are together. The hint of a mismatch brings on a touch of worry—are they right for each other? Will their marriage make it? Of course, no one who has ever been to the movies imagines for one minute that a movie called Made for Each Other is going to end with them not being made for each other. The fact that they are not a perfectly simpatico star pairing works within the plot, adding another layer of uncertainty.
Made for Each Other announces itself specifically as a marriage movie in its credits. (By this time the audience has already
spent its money.) The first image onscreen is a marriage license. Under the empty column marked “Bride,” Carole Lombard’s hand writes her name, and under “Groom,” James Stewart’s writes his. These signatures (autographs, really) are immediately followed by their star-power names turned into large block type that reads: “Carole Lombard and James Stewart in Made for Each Other.” When the credits are completed, a title card informs the audience that “greater New York has a population of 7,434,346, among the least important of whom is … ” and the image fades into a page from the Manhattan telephone directory. A spotlight searches the crowded page for one lone name, finally locating it: “Mason, John H., Atty.” This swift and eloquent opening states clearly to an audience that the hero of the film will be an ordinary man, not unlike them, and his story will be individual and personal, one to which they can directly relate. It has also stated clearly that it will be the story of his marriage to Carole Lombard. The visual shorthand is specific.
John and Jane Mason have gotten married unexpectedly over a weekend, never having met previously. Their story is a cleverly structured script that moves the couple forward across a series of events, each one of which presents them with a problem to be solved, and each problem directly connected to the state of marriage. First, Stewart must tell his boss (a crotchety Charles Coburn) that he is married. “It happened rather suddenly,” he explains to the disbelieving (and disapproving) Coburn. “I saw her standing there … She had a cinder in her eye … We knew the moment we looked at each other.” “Did you?” interrupts Coburn. “Last year there were nearly half a million divorces in this country.” The audience is asked to recognize Coburn as the voice of cynicism, but also as the cold air of realism. (Who knows what skeptics spoke up before their own nuptials?) Viewers know their job is to expect trouble in the plot, but mainly to endorse the lovely screwball “meet-cute” that Stewart just sketched for them—the street-corner cinder in the eye. After all, they saw that movie, or certainly one very much like it, and it might easily have starred Stewart or Lombard. The marriage movie knows its sources, and it knows which references to make to hook the audience.
It’s important that viewers never see the Stewart/Lombard courtship. This makes Made for Each Other a pure marriage film, since there can be no suggestion that it’s in any way a romantic comedy in the usual terms of that genre. Although the movie has romance (married) and comedy (screwball), the denial of the courtship period—the repression of the romantic-comedy plot—is key to the film’s definition of itself.12
Facing Coburn is not easy for Stewart, but the next episode pits him against an even tougher foe: his mother. This crafty dame (well played by Lucile Watson) has no plans to let go of her meal-ticket son. She knows a problem when she sees one, and she sees one in the shape of Carole Lombard. As the three of them politely sip tea in the apartment Stewart and his mom share, Stewart can’t find the right moment—or the right words—to break his out-of-the-blue news. As he stammers and hesitates, growing more and more uncertain, he begins to refer to Lombard (sitting eagerly at his side) as his new “girlfriend.” The bride picks up on this and becomes very alert, ready for what’s coming. Mom starts to grill her: who are her people, and what is she doing with herself, and why did she leave Boston to come down here right after just meeting Stewart on a weekend? “She was taking a course in journalism,” offers Stewart, adding weakly, “but gave it up.” “Oh?” says Mom, who then advises Lombard to go back to Boston at once and keep on with the journalism, to have herself “a good career.” Not one to lose track of the direction they’re trying to go, Lombard spars back, “Isn’t marriage a career unto itself?” Mom, now knowing she must bring out the heavy artillery, fires full-bore: “Oh, yes. Indeed, indeed. Marriage is a business, a very serious business. A partnership in the strictest sense of the word. And one must prepare for it. So many things to learn. That’s why one mustn’t rush into it … No reason for Jane to develop into a household drudge.” Hearing this, Lombard wastes no more time: “We’re married,” she states flatly, finishing her opponent off. Mom immediately collapses, pulling her best defense: “My heart!”
One image says it all: newlywed Jimmy Stewart looks nervous. He forgot to tell his mom (Lucille Watson) that he unexpectedly married Carole Lombard. Mom’s reaction speaks for itself and Lombard wonders how things are going to work out. That’s the basic plot of Made for Each Other. (Photo Credit 2.5)
This early scene demonstrates clearly that Stewart will be caught between his two women. They will loathe each other from day one. Since it’s too late to send Lombard packing, Mom pretends to accept the marriage (“What’s done is done”). She plays on Stewart’s genuine love and Lombard’s essentially good nature to secure her position, wangling an invitation to live with them. In these two funny yet serious opening confessional episodes, the young couple, clearly in love and happy with each other, are forced to tell their news to two key people in their future, his boss and his mother, both of whom disapprove and would be happy to see the marriage undone. At no time have events (or even conversation) strayed from the central issue of marriage—or into anything the audience wouldn’t find familiar.
As the film moves forward, each episode (all of which are well written, well performed, and grounded in easily recognizable events) is introduced by some type of formal institutional image: a document, a newspaper headline, a building title, an office door. Each of these images sets up and defines a particular domestic crisis that the couple will have to face: competition at the office, a pregnancy test, a hospital crisis, etc. The movie will grow darker as it progresses. The problems will escalate in importance and in danger to their happiness. Lombard and Stewart will begin to live out a series of disappointments and disasters.
The first disappointment is a delayed honeymoon. Immediately after they board the Normandie in blissful excitement, Stewart is summoned back to the office for an emergency that will keep them in New York. If he wants to hold his job, and advance to a junior partnership, he has no choice but to give up their European honeymoon trip.
Moving forward in time, the young couple, still optimistic and hopeful, still happy together, are seen hosting a dinner party in their new apartment. The guests will be his boss, the boss’s daughter (who everyone, including her but excepting Stewart, thought would be the person he’d marry), his chief rival at the office (the smarmy Carter, who has half of Stewart’s abilities), and, of course, his mother, who lives with them. This episode is written as a comedy, but inside it lies a dark streak of frustration and misery. Both Lombard and Stewart are frantic and under pressure. Lombard wants everything to be perfect so she’ll be an asset to her man. Stewart is anticipating that his boss will announce a new junior partnership, and although he has no reason to believe it won’t be him, he’s very nervous. Mom, of course, is busily running the household, giving the maid orders that directly contradict those Lombard has given (“Dear, I was only trying to help”). With a tense couple, an angry maid, and an interfering mother-in-law, the film sets the stage for disaster—and delivers it. After the guests arrive, Coburn is ungracious and demanding. His daughter (who yawns throughout the proceedings) means to punish Stewart for dumping her. His rival intends to sit by and let everything crash in flames. Mom is Mom, and Lombard works too hard at hostessing. The maid, who has announced she’s quitting but will see the party through until exactly 9 p.m., serves dinner as if it were an army drill. On the stroke of nine, wearing her coat and hat, she marches into the dining room and demands what they owe her: twelve dollars. Lombard doesn’t have any money, so while Stewart runs around the apartment trying to scratch twelve dollars together, Coburn announces he’s giving the junior partnership to the unworthy Carter.
This extended dinner party is the first fully developed portrait of the young couple’s married life. As the scene unfolds, it cleverly—without undue attention—defines a host of problems: in-law trouble, lack of money, servant issues, rivalry at work, and, in particular, a deep, confidence
-shattering disappointment for the hardworking Stewart. The scene ends with him pulling himself together to graciously, generously, and sincerely toast the elevation of his rival—even though they’ve run out of wine, another flaw in their plans for the evening.
Made for Each Other then picks up speed with a series of events: Lombard becomes pregnant; the baby is born and brought home to an apartment now overcrowded with Mom, parents, and baby paraphernalia; a never-ending parade of unhappy maids comes and goes; debts pile up; more arguments occur between the tired and beleaguered Lombard and the endlessly interfering mother-in-law. These events are directly connected to marriage and home life, a parade of common problems faced by couples of the day. Events move unceasingly downward out of comedy into frustration and disappointment, finally reaching a scene in which Stewart comes home drunk after attending his college reunion (class of ’28). He was once voted Most Likely to Succeed, but his classmates have now passed him by. Lombard, still believing in him, nevertheless tells him the truth: he lets the office take advantage of him, and he needs to stand up to them. Believing totally in her capable husband, Lombard tries to give him the spine to ask for a raise, which he truly deserves. She eggs him on—but in a supportive and confident manner. She’s right in every way, but when he finally manages to blurt out his request to Coburn, everything goes wrong, and he’s asked to take a pay cut instead. Stewart is broken by this disappointment. “I let you down,” he tells Lombard. The happy young man we first met is near tears, lost and ashamed. He has wanted to give his wife a fur coat and a home in the country, the two blue chips of the Hollywood marriage game. “You’re all I want,” she replies.
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