The decisive valley

Another of those movies that I saw a bunch of times in the TCM schedule but never got around to watching for some reason was one of MGM's prestige films from the mid-1940s, The Valley of Decision. It aired some time back so I watched it before it left the Watch TCM app, writing up this review and waiting for it to show up on TCM again so that I could finally do a review of it. Well, that next TCM showing is coming up tomorrow (August 14) at noon as part of Greer Garson's day in Summer Under the Stars, which means that now's the time to schedule this post.

Garson was probably MGM's biggest star at the time this movie was made, as it was just after Joan Crawford's contract was not renewed and before post-war stars started to make names for themselves. Garson plays Mary Rafferty, a young woman from the poor part of Pittsburgh in the 1870s. Steel was king in Pittsburgh, and Mary's father Pat (Lionel Barrymore) worked for many years at one of the steel mills, at least until getting injured in a workplace accident and requiring the use of a wheelchair. As a result, Dad hates the Scotts, the wealthy family that owns the mill where he worked.

Pat being an adult woman without a husband, needs to go into work, and there weren't all that many jobs available for women in those days. Two of the biggies were teaching and being a servant, and Pat has possibilities of a job in that second field. The only thing is that her employers would be... the Scotts, which pisses Dad off to no end. But she needs a job, and takes it after the matriarch of the family, Clarissa (Gladys Cooper), takes a liking to Pat.

Pat walks into a house where she discovers a family that's somewhat divided over the family business. There's an old saying of going from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations, and the younger generation is the third generation. Patriarch William (Donald Crisp) inherited the business and has run it as well as he can, intending to bequeath it to at least one of his four children. The only thing is that the four children have different views on what they want for the business. Daughter Constance (Marsha Hunt) doesn't particularly care since women weren't expected to be titans of industry in those days; she ends up marrying a titled Englishman. Youngest son Ted (Marshall Thompson) is a bit of a drifter; and, as the youngest, probably isn't intended to be the inheritor anyway. That leaves Paul (Gregory Peck) who has an interest in metallurgy, and William (Dan Duryea), who's hard-nosed and doesn't care much for the workers unlike Dad and Paul.

Things get complicated when Paul and Pat fall in love with each other. Since they're from totally different social classes, they really can't marry each other, so Pat leaves with Connie to go to the UK and work as maid to Connie and her husband when those two get married. But during her time in the UK, there's terrible labor trouble brewing at the industry. Pat's father and some of the other more militant men want to form a union, but William is staunchly opposed to that idea. Pat eventually returns to the US just in time for all the labor strife.

The Valley of Decision is another of those movies that's of a type MGM did well, at least if you don't think too hard about the labor strife section that probably would have been handled a lot differently at Warner Bros. Garson is way too old for the role at least at the start of the movie, but I don't know that MGM had a younger actress with the heft to play it. Lana Turner was on her way up at MGM, but she would have been terribly miscast in any of the female roles. This was made not long after Gaslight, but I don't think Angela Lansbury would have been able to carry Garson's part. Duryea is playing yet another of his bad-guy characters and Peck is pretty good as the good brother. Lionel Barrymore badly overacts, but at least his overacting is entertaining enough.

If you like glossy period pieces from the studio era, The Valley of Decision will be right up your alley.