Unfortunately, as of this writing, The Baby is not part of the Roman tribute
We're into a new month, which as always means new programming features on TCM, including a new Star of the Month. This month, that star is Ruth Roman, and her movies will be airing every Tuesday in prime time. I currently have one of her films on my DVR, and that one is airing overnight tonight at 1:15 AM (so still Tuesday in the Pacific time zone): Invitation.
Roman is not the star here; that honor goes to Dorothy McGuire. McGuire plays Ellen Pierce, recently married to architect Dan Pierce (Van Johnson) and having a father Simon (Louis Calhern) who spoils her rotten; as the movie opens he's just bought her another fur coat. However, Dad has a reason for spoiling his daughter. She's sickly, subject to bouts of shortness of breath. In fact, that goes back to a case of rheumatic fever Ellen had as a kid. Normally, resting for a few minutes helps, but in her last episode, Ellen actually passes out!
Ellen get picked up by Dad's chauffeur to go to his palatial estate on Long Island wher eshe also meets with family doctor Pritchard (Ray Collins). They insist that she's going to get better, and in fact, they've just heard about a possible new treatment for her condition. On the way home, she stops off to see another doctor who is a friend of the family, Dr. Redwick. This visit is a bit tougher thanks to Redwick's daughter Maud (Ruth Roman). Maud was Dan's girlfriend, or at least she thought she was. She loved Dan and he only considered her a friend. Maud expected Dan to marry her until Dan decided to marry Ellen in what was seen as a big surprise to everybody, as we learn in a flashback. Maud hasn't forgiven Ellen, and tells Ellen that she's only got a year with Dan, after which Maud is going to win him back forever.
Of course, Maud has reason for making this comment. We eventually learn, again in part through flashbacks, that Ellen's childhood rheumatic fever has left her with a damaged mitral valve. Nowadays, it's the sort of thing that could be cured with routine surgery, but in those days such a surgery would have been considered a dangerous experiment. Indeed, such a surgery is the "possible new treatment" everyone else is discussing, but so far it hasn't had anything close to a 100% success rate. As things stand right now, but nobody has been telling Ellen, her mitral valve is deteriorating and will probably kill her in a year or so, hence Maud's nasty comment.
As for Dan, business hadn't been going well for him, until Ellen's father contacted him. Dan always liked Ellen as a friend although as with Maud he didn't honestly love her. When Ellen's father learns that Dan doesn't have any love interest, he suggests that perhaps Dan could marry Ellen and make her last year of life happy. In exchange, Dad would use his extensive contacts to get good jobs for Dan. Of course, all of this is to be kept a secret from Ellen. And, of course, as in Dark Victory, the doomed patient is going to find this out. At least in the case of Invitation, however, there's the possibility of that new treatment.
Invitation was made at MGM, and to be honest, it comes across as one of those MGM movies where they still had all the gloss in the world but couldn't use it to make a mess of a plot come out any better. Ruth Roman's character is way too mental; Ellen similarly goes off the deep end when she discovers the deception; and Calhern doesn't come across as particularly fatherly here. It's once again a script problem and not the fault of the actors.
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