I Do and I Don't

by Jeanine Basinger

  Joanne Woodward’s Mrs. Bridge is one of the best performances ever given on film of a middle-aged woman. Woodward presents herself as an authentic example of a fortyish woman of that era: plump and frumpy, despite being still pretty and very well dressed and coiffed. It’s the look that the mothers of my own youth had—looking good, actually, but also dressed as if they were twenty years older than they were. When she goes out, Woodward always wears her hat, her pearls, and her gloves. She is sweet, sometimes befuddled—a character living life the way she was taught to live it, sometimes wondering, sometimes sad, and sometimes breaking into little moments of joy. She busies herself playing cards with her friends, attending country-club events, decorating her Christmas tree, and taking appropriate “lessons” such as a drawing class. She loves her children, always reaching out to them and offering them the platitudes she believes are real nuggets of truth. She adores her best friend, the Danner character, but as Danner sinks into alcoholism and confusion, ultimately killing herself, Woodward can’t understand why. She doesn’t question things; she just goes along. She does what’s expected of her, and she knows what those expectations are. When her husband refuses to take shelter in the country-club basement when a tornado strikes, she stays upstairs with him even though she’s terrified. When the lights go out, and he orders her to get up and search around for some butter for his bread, she does it. She’s passive, because anything else would be inappropriate. Woodward’s subtle performance never makes Mrs. Bridge look like a fool, but never undercuts the meaning of the role. She ends up trapped in her car on a snowy day, unable to back out of the garage, unable to open the car doors, and with no one to hear her cries for help. (It’s the maid’s day off, and Mr. Bridge is where he usually is and where indeed the American husband resides: at the office.) Her problem is that she doesn’t know how to communicate, and doesn’t even understand she has the right to express herself.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bridge live on parallel tracks but are moving in reverse directions. Their total lack of any real communication locks into place. Mr. Bridge grows more rigid and interior, and Mrs. Bridge grows more vulnerable and melancholy. He grows more and more fused into the world as he believes it exists, and she grows more and more out of it, detached and alone. The characters are presented to the audience as a cautionary tale, and a sympathetic justification for change in the roles to be played by men and women, not only in marriage but in life in general. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge was made outside the studio-system era, but it nevertheless reveals moviemaking strategy at work on the subject of marriage. Showing a union in which two people never really connect or communicate, it suggests to viewers, “But that’s not you—it’s your parents.”44

  Another superb movie about a mature marriage grounded in a fundamental lack of communication is Dodsworth, based on the Sinclair Lewis novel. Dodsworth is a great movie by any standard. It’s more than just a “marriage movie,” but its marriage nevertheless illustrates incompatibility. Fran and Sam Dodsworth are not young. They’re a middle-aged couple in a midwestern city. Their daughter is grown, and as the movie opens, Mr. Dodsworth has just sold his extremely successful automobile factory. He’s a bit sad, having left behind “twenty years” of his life, but his wife’s perspective is that “after twenty years of doing what was expected of us, we’re free.” She clearly states: “I want a new life—all over from the very beginning, a glorious and perfectly free, adventurous life. It’s coming to us, Sammy. We’ve done our job. We’ve brought up Emily and seen her married … ” For Mrs. Dodsworth, life has not ended; it’s just begun. For Mr. Dodsworth, his job was his adventure. For her, the job was her obligation, her half of a marital agreement. When he chides her a little for being so down on their hometown (ironically named Zenith), she is once again very clear: “Have you ever thought what Zenith means to me? You go down to the plant and deal in millions, have a perfectly marvelous time. I go down to the kitchen and order dinner.” She reminds him that while he was enjoying becoming a tycoon, she was dealing with “ladies’ luncheons, always the same ladies, and bridge … boring dinner parties with the same people … children, the garden club … I want all the things I’m entitled to. I’m begging for life … No, I’m not. I’m demanding it.” After twenty years, Mrs. Dodsworth is finally communicating what she thinks—it’s “my turn”—but Mr. Dodsworth hears without truly understanding that what she really wants will dismantle their marriage, which was successful because it was defined by duty, society’s expectations, small-city responsibilities, and obligation. What unfolds is a tragedy that liberates only one of the Dodsworths into a freer, happier marriage—Mr. Dodsworth, brilliantly played by Walter Huston (who had also played the role onstage).

  Few movies depict the collapse of a happy, successful marriage of twenty years, and those that do present it as a temporary crisis met and overcome, with a return to the status quo. Dodsworth is the story of the death of a marriage in which the couple, when they begin to really spend time together without tasks to fulfill, discover they are incompatible. They talk to each other, but never really hear each other. Throughout the film, both of them at various times refer to their twenty years, and to how much they meant, and to their love. Chatterton, the weaker of the two, tells her husband, “Sam, you’ve got to take care of me. I don’t trust myself,” and he says, “I’ve got to take care of her. A man’s habits get pretty strong in twenty years.” Neither one of them knows what else to say, but the truth is, she wants out from under his management, and he tires of her “free” behavior.

  And that is who the Dodsworths are: a couple who have acted out a happy marriage by the rule book that society provided them. He worked hard to become a success, and she worked hard to become a successful man’s wife. He managed his office and she managed their home and daughter. As their twenty years passed by, they were cohabiting, but really living apart in different worlds. She didn’t see how tough he really could be and how down-to-earth and unpretentious he was. He didn’t see her potential to become vain and fussy, or that she was afraid of aging, wanting some thrills, wanting to be admired. On their trip to Europe, he’s amused by her lying about her age, and tolerant of her flirtations, but as she sinks deeper into the world of superficial Europeans, he decides they should go home. She begs to stay. “Let me have my fling now … because you’re simply rushing at old age, Sam, and I’m not ready for that.”

  Dodsworth, one of the best marriage movies ever made, tells the story of a wife who becomes dissatisfied (Ruth Chatterton) with her husband (Walter Huston) … (Photo Credit 2.79)

  … but when she tries to find herself a younger, more sophisticated mate, she runs afoul of her potential mother-in-law (the formidable Maria Ouspenskaya). (Photo Credit 2.80)

  It’s the decision that will ultimately destroy them. Sam Dodsworth returns home without her, and she stays behind to begin an affair with a European played by Paul Lukas. When Huston finally journeys back to bring Chatterton home, she has dyed her hair blond and he has checked up on Lukas. When Huston brings the adulterous couple together in a hotel room, Dodsworth the hard-nosed businessman and Dodsworth the determined husband merge as one. “I wanted to see you two together … I wouldn’t have gotten where I am in life if I didn’t have it in me to be a bit ruthless … I’m sure you’ve given her things she needed and wanted, and never got from me. But I’m interested in what I need and want, and that happens to be peace of mind.” Lukas tries to play the sophisticate, jocularly reminding Huston that “in Shakespeare’s Othello, things end badly for the hero.” “Yes, well, I’m not Othello,” snaps back Huston, the confident man who became a self-made millionaire. When he asks point-blank if they wish to marry, Lukas suddenly fades out the door, leaving Chatterton to say, “I’m so sorry, Sam, so terribly sorry.” He says, “I’m willing to wipe the slate clean if you are.”

  The hotel-room scene is the point where most marriage movies of this type would end. They would return home and be buoyed up and in each other’s arms again as their
grandson is born in Zenith in December. (“Zenith … in December … ,” murmurs Chatterton when she hears the news about the baby.) But Dodsworth tells the truth. Chatterton has changed, and she does want what Huston can’t give her. The Dodsworths stay on in Europe to finish out their trip, and when a chance to wed an impoverished young Austrian count arrives, Chatterton grabs it, telling Huston, “You’ve never known me.” He asks her only to put off the divorce for two or three months, just to feel sure of her young count. When they say goodbye at the train station, he stands on the steps as the train pulls out, saying what he automatically said to her while they were wed: “Did I remember to tell you today that I adore you?” She says, in an attempt to be perky, “Try not to be too lonely.” As the train moves slowly out, and they look at each other, it’s the inexplicable ending to a marriage, the sort of thing that no one can ever figure out. Neither articulates it, but the traditional words of the marriage movie—“What happened to us?”—are felt all over the scene.

  The movie moves to a conclusion in which Chatterton does lose her count. His mom, played by the formidable Maria Ouspenskaya, shows up to flat-out announce that, as a divorced woman, Chatterton will be unacceptable as a wife for her son—and if that’s not enough, she’s too old to have children, a must for his lineage. When Chatterton gamely tries to counter that she has money, and the count’s family may be noble but they are also poor, Mom isn’t having any. “Can you think,” she says calmly, “how little happiness there can be for the old wife of a young husband?” Devastated, Chatterton calls Huston to take her home, and he comes, even though he has found his own new energy and happiness with the beautiful young Mary Astor in Naples.

  The Dodsworths do not survive. Mr. leaves Mrs. before the boat back to America departs. She challenges him with “What’s going to happen to me? Do you think you can ever get me out of your blood?”—and he responds with the famous movie line “Maybe not, but love’s got to stop some place short of suicide.” Was this the film’s message? In 1936, when Dodsworth became a hit, earning seven Oscar nominations, was its appeal that finally someone was saying that when a marriage doesn’t work, get out of it? Was it a message to women—to accept aging, or not to tie themselves down to home and kids while they were young, or … exactly what? The great success of Dodsworth is that it eloquently says marriage is mysterious. You can go through it without thinking, carrying out its ritual, and then suddenly wake up and find you don’t know your mate.45 In Dodsworth can be seen on the surface many thoughts and ideas that were lying doggo under the surface of most other movies about marriage. It speaks about things people couldn’t articulate easily: lack of communication, marital boredom, a couple in which one is content to be a simple American and one aspires to European “glamour”; about how life goes by, just goes by, without anyone really understanding what a mate might really want or who a mate might really be.

  A variation of the noncommunication problem between a couple is often creatively developed: deliberate deception. According to movies, married couples lie to one another. Constantly. About small things (how much a new hat cost) and big things (sleeping with a sister) and the most outré (the mate is an ex-Nazi or an alien from outer space). Deception is a convenient plot strategy for a marriage movie, but it was so commonly used that it’s almost presented as a life strategy. Why do movie couples always lie to each other? Apparently so events can move on to some entertainment involving big problems. Yet couldn’t there be more honest ways to do that, or even some more honest problems to cope with? The movies use deception as if it were part of the wedding vows: “I promise to lie to you about anything that might hurt your feelings, cause me inconvenience, stop me from having what I want, or get in the way of our daily role playing with each other.” The movies create a sense that two people cannot really live together on a day-to-day basis and be totally honest about things. Honesty is an unworkable concept. Even if it’s only a simple “Do I look fat in this dress?” played for comedy, if a husband tells the truth it’s over for him. Movies don’t address the suggestion of “don’t ask the question,” and the conclusion is simply that movie marriages are built on lies and therefore real ones are, too.

  Two movies that illustrate “deception”—bad communication over noncommunication—and its consequential incompatibility represent the tragic and comic sides to the issue, Deception (1946) and My Wife’s Best Friend (1952). Deception (Bette Davis, Claude Rains, and Paul Henreid) shows what can go seriously wrong once a bride starts lying to her husband. Davis and Henreid were young lovers when World War II broke out in Europe. Davis was able to flee, leaving Henreid behind. Told he was dead, Davis has pursued a life in New York in the upper-crust music world, becoming the mistress of a famous conductor (Rains). Henreid, a cellist, turns up suddenly, the way men who are supposed to be dead always do in movies starring women. When Davis finds him, she is rapturously motivated to marry him instantly, while Rains is out of town.

  The return of Rains, who arrives uninvited at the wedding celebration, motivates Davis to start lying in all directions. She has never told Rains about Henreid, and she’s certainly never told Henreid about Rains. Rains is furious and humiliated in front of their elegant and sophisticated friends. Henreid is confused about how Davis is able to live in a posh loft apartment with a fridge stocked with pâté and champagne. (She says she gives music lessons.) In the end, Davis is forced to shoot and kill Rains because she fears he’ll ruin Henreid’s cello debut by making him too nervous to play well, just the way he did when he took the couple to dinner before Henreid’s audition. (Rains kept changing his mind about what to order for dinner, deliberately delaying things to increase tension at the table. In an acting tour de force, he thoughtfully toys with his menu, and it’s “… ah, the pheasant, but hold the cream sauce … no wait, let’s have the woodcock … ”) Davis, remembering that woodcock, shoots Rains on the stairway before he can get out to conduct her husband’s debut.

  Deception, a serious movie, has no truth, only consequences. The comic variation, My Wife’s Best Friend (Anne Baxter and Macdonald Carey), has no serious consequences, but one dangerous moment of truth. Baxter and Carey have been happily married for eight years, with happiness defined by Carey being a highly successful businessman and Baxter a spoiled wife with a beautiful home, furs, and jewels. It is a movie in which all the women—Baxter, her mother, and her sister-in-law—seriously nag their husbands. The portrait of marriage is both offensive and depressing. Carey and Baxter, off on a vacation, are on board an airplane when its starboard engine catches fire. Believing they are going to crash and die, they turn to each other for a soupçon of honesty. “Let’s not lie to each other,” says Baxter, admitting, “I’ve been a rotten wife. I’ve been selfish. I’ve nagged you.” To make her feel better, he reciprocates, telling her that when she went to New York three years earlier, he became involved with her best friend. (“I paid for it. I’ve been sick over it.”) She forgives him—that is, until they land safely. (“You poor slob,” their lawyer says when he hears about it.) The movie chugs forward through their ugly divorce, which is supposed to be lightened with little jokes such as her imagining herself as Joan of Arc or the wife of a desert sheik or Cleopatra, none of which are even remotely amusing (the martyr, the slave, and the adulterer being her available roles). Baxter and Carey are presented as the 1950s version of the 1930s screwball couple, an el cheapo Awful Truth. Apparently truth doesn’t just go a long way in marriage—it goes too far.

  Oh, no! The plane is going to crash, so husband Macdonald Carey makes the error of fessing up to wife Anne Baxter that he once had a fling in My Wife’s Best Friend. Big mistake. (Photo Credit 2.81)

  ADDICTION

  Incompatibility in all its varied forms was a guaranteed audience connection, but why did marriage movies about addiction have any appeal? And what was their logical entertainment goal? For a married member of an audience, addiction was at bottom a statement about marital misery in which the person you wed made y
ou unhappy by bad behavior. Underneath the surface was something that moviegoers and moviemakers both understood: marriage partners can fail you. (Or as the Countess in The Women intones, “L’amour, l’amour, how it does let you down!”) Addiction had metaphoric resonance, and an unhappy wife or husband could watch a story about addiction and identify with it outside its own parameters. (An unmarried audience member could see a cautionary tale.) It was a link that might be sad, frightening, or only loosely connected, but it nevertheless was a link. The character that is an addict is the character (or marital partner) who is out of control and who demands too much. The addict wants more—more things that are bad, but also, by implication, more than his or her share. Selfishness in marriage was something audiences could recognize and understand.

  There were two basic forms of movie married addicts: the ordinary human one and the celebrity.46 Of these two forms, audiences much preferred the celebrity. Biopics such as I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955, Lillian Roth), The Joker Is Wild (1957, Joe E. Lewis), The Outsider (1961, Ira Hamilton Hayes), and The Gene Krupa Story (1959, drummer Krupa) linked stories of addiction to music, to gangsters, and to war heroics. Such films were appealing to people who had not become successful or heroic. The message was that the people who had weren’t perfect, so regular people had no need to feel inadequate beside them. When these movies ended in confession, possibly even rehabilitation, they provided satisfying escapism in their own way. Movies about fictional addicts were less popular, because they suggested more of a this-could-happen-to-you frame of reference.