The Cockeyed Miracle

I've mentioned before in conjunction with quite a few movies how the Production Code can be a problem with forcing a certain plot resolution on the film, with the only question being how the movie actually gets there. I couldn't help but have similar thoughts as I was watching the 1946 film The Cockeyed Miracle.

The plot deals with the Griggs family that has two adult children, led by patriarch Sam Griggs (Frank Morgan). He's a shipbulider, but getting up there in years and beginning to suffer some age-related health problems. His wife Amy (Gladys Cooper) loves him, and isn't worried about the prospect of illness forcing Sam to retire, since they've saved up some money. Unfortunately, she doesn't know that he's put it in a real estate investment that may or may not pay off, but in any case even if it pays off later, the money is still in an illiquid asset. Sam gave the savings to his best friend Tom Carter (Cecil Kellaway) to buy a plot of land, but the only possible investor wants to see that the land will stand up to the storms that hit the coast.

As for the adult children, Jennifer (Audrey Totter) is in love with an assistant professor at the local college, Howard (Richard Quine before he became an director). He's got a chance at a full professorship, but it's at a school out west, and there's the question of whether she should leave and split up the family with a sickly father, or wait for Howard to come back in a few years. The son, however, is the more immediate problem.

Jim Griggs (Marshall Thompson) would like to be a shipbuilder like his father, but economic circumstances have so far required him to work at his father's fish-packing plant. But on the day that the action in the movie opens, he comes running home with a letter from a shipbulider over in London in the UK. They've got a prospect for a job, but he's going to have to set out for England in fairly short order, and to do that he needs the money for the transatlantic passage. In theory, the family has the money, but that's because Sam is the only one who knows that the money has been invested in a still-illiquid land deal. He can't get the money right now.

Things really change when he goes up to bed. He comes down and sees... his father Ben (Keenan Wynn). This is a problem because Ben has been dead since Sam was a young man, and for Sam to see Ben now means that Sam is really quite dead too, not that the rest of the family is aware of it just yet. Ben has appeared as a sort of ghost, but really with the intention of taking Sam to the next world.

As a ghost, he does have the sort of supernatural powers that allow him to do the sort of things that those of us on this side of life to attribute to ghosts or other phenomena of which we're not yet aware. One thing that Ben might just be able to do is to conjure up a storm, so that the prospective buyer of the land will see his question answered of how the land will stand up. Ben, having done that, satisfies the buyer, who writes a check for the purchase price of the land. All of the Griggs' money problems will be solved!

Except that Tom has a change of heart. Since there was no actual contract signed between Tom and Sam, there would be no theoretical legal recourse for Sam to get the money back even if he were still alive. With him being dead and Tom being the only one to know about the agreement he and Sam had, it would be easy for Tom to be evil and take all of the money from the land deal. There is, however, the question of whether the Production Code would allow that....

The Cockeyed Miracle is based on a stage play, and it's extremely easy to see the stage origins watching the movie. A lot of it is based in the parlor/living room of the Griggs house. However, since the story deals with ghosts, it's a lot easier for a movie to deal with the technical problems of trying to portray ghosts than one can do on the stage.

That having been said, the cast does a pretty good job with the material, led by Frank Morgan who is clearly the star here. With a star like Morgan and not anybody bigger, it's obvious that this is more programmer material than prestige movie, and the movie often feels like it has the production values of something more limited. That's not to say it's a bad movie; it does well with its limited aims. At the same time, though, it's also not the sort of movie I'd recommend to people who aren't necessarily fans of old movies: the production values seem thoroughly stuck in the 1940s when the movie was made. It's the sort of thing that could probably stand a remake.