TCM's Gena Rowlands tribute

Gena Rowlands in Gloria (10:45 PM)

Actress Gena Rowlands dies in August at the 94. TCM is now getting to a programming tribute to her, with five of her movies:

8:00 PM A Woman Under the Influence;
10:45 PM Gloria;
1:00 AM Lonely Are the Brave;
3:00 AM The High Cost of Loving; and
4:45 AM Night on Earth

I had The High Cost of Loving on my DVR from when José Ferrer was honored in Summer Under the Stars, so now is the perfect time to watch it and do a post on it.

Ferrer plays Jim Fry, a mid-level purchasing manager in one of those industrial companies that dominated the American economic scene -- or at least Hollywood's depiction of it -- in the years following World War II. Think of the sort of business in Executive Suite. Jim has been married to Ginny (Rowlands, in her first role, getting an "introducing" credit for it) for nine years now, and they live a solidly middle-class life.

One morning at the breakfast table, Jim reads a story about a bunch of executives from a big conglomerate having bought the company where he works, and sending their executives to examine their acquisition, as though this were the most important thing in the world. Ginny responds by wording something as a news story, but really breaking the news to her husband that she may finally be pregnant after years of trying! This being 1958, the cast still can't use the word "pregnant", leading to scenes with Ginny's obstetrician (Richard Deacon) that are supposed to be funny but come across as stilted.

In the parking lot at work, Jim starts talking to his best friend Steve Hayward (Bobby Troup). Like Jim, Steve is in middle management, and hoping for a promotion as a result of the merger. Indeed, that morning, the new bosses send out a series of memos about an important luncheon in a week's time, which everybody assumes, being invitation-only, is for the people who are going to be staying on and getting promotions. The only thing is, Jim doesn't get one of these memos!

So Jim starts going to various other people in the company trying to figure out what's going on, only without being direct about it because he doesn't want to give away that he hasn't received the memo. Eventually, the audience learns that Jim's not getting an invitation was a clerical oversight to be corrected the following morning. But Jim doesn't know that, and everybody he talks to results in the sort of conversation where he thinks his position as the company is worse than it was before he started the conversation!

I suppose in the business culture of the 1950s, all of this might have seemed funny. Today, however, it comes across as dated and stale. But there's an even bigger problem, which is the screenplay. It's written so as to have everybody talk in metaphors rather than trying to be direct with each other, and that just doesn't work. The characters come across as artificial and not particularly likeable.

The High Cost of Loving has a kernel of a good idea, but it doesn't work. If you haven't seen any of the Rowlands movies, I'd recommend the other four before this one.