Saturday's Children (1940)

Another of my recent DVR watches was the 1940 film version of the Maxwell Anderson play Saturday's Children. It's another one that last I checked is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archve.

Anne Shirley plays Bobby Halevy, who still lives with her parents as a lot of unmarried young women did back in those days. Her father Henry (Claude Rains) has gotten her a job with the company where he works as a bookkeeper, which is a good thing for her. Dad is a bit of a dreamer who's never really wanted to accept that the life he has is the one he's going to have to live, but here we are.

One day Bobby gets an invoice in Spanish, since the company does a good business with Latin America. Brought in to translate is Rims Rosson (John Garfield). He's also a dreamer, with plans to get a job in the Philippines (still a US colony at the time the movie was made, of course), where he's going to work on his sure-fire invention of turning hemp into silk, nylon only having been in its infancy at the time and about to become unavailable to the domestic market when the military would need it for World War II.

Bobby and Rims fall in love, but there's no way Bobby can follow Rims to the Philippines, since the job isn't going to pay anywhere near enough for Rims to support a wife. So Bobby's sister Flossie (Lee Patrick), who is married to a debt collector Willie (Roscoe Karns) and who still lives with Mom and Dad too, comes up with a brilliant idea. Bobby should trick Rims into marrying her!

Bobby does this, and the two are even able to live on their own because they live frugally. But then disaster strikes. Bobby's company hits a financial downturn, and one of the company's policies is that since married women are likely to start a family -- remember, these are the days when a man could be the sole breadwinner and Mom could stay at home to raise the kids -- married women would be first on the chopping block to lose their jobs. Now the couple can't afford even the crappy apartment they live in.

Then, to top it all off, Bobby gets pregnant, but can't bring herself to tell Rims. That, or the fact that Rims' position in the Philippines is still open. Or the fact that she tricked him into marrying her. Can the couple survive if any of this comes out? (Well, surely Bobby's going to start showing someday.)

Saturday's Children is another interesting period piece, but one that's not without its flaws. I think a lot of people would suggest that John Garfield was miscast, although apparently he wanted to do the movie to show he was more than just a tough guy. I don't think he's the problem. Instead, the big problem is the script, which is too slow in getting the two leads married, and then has Bobby be a less-than redeeming person at a lot of points. Surely there could have been some way for Bobby to find secretarial work in the Philippines?

Still, Saturday's Children is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it before.