Sister Carrie

Jennifer Jones was honored last August in Summer Under the Stars, which once again gave me the opportunity to record some movies I hadn't seen before. One of those was Carrie, the adaptation of the Theodore Dreiser novel Sister Carrie.

Jones stars as Carrie Meeber, daughter in a small-town Missouri family at the turn of the century who have already had one daughter go off to Chicago for better economic opportunities. It's Carrie's turn, as her parents buy her a one-way ticket to Chicago. One the train, she's keeping to herself, except that she's pestered by one of the male passengers, Charles Drouet (Eddie Albert). Charles is a traveling salesman and is immediately taken by Carrie although he's really much too forward about it, especially for circa 1900. And he doesn't seem too happy when Carrie gets off the train in South Chicago, since that's considered the slum area.

Life with her sister isn't the greatest, since money is tight and Carrie's brother-in-law is tough in a sensible way: you have to be a bit strict to survive in such conditions. Carrie has a job as a seamstress in what is essentially a sweatshop, but injures her hand in an industrial accident and gets fired, this being the days before workers' comp and other such benefits. Carrie goes to see Charles, who takes her to Fitzgerald's, an upscale restaurant managed by George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier).

Carrie, having lost her job, winds up moving in with Charles, which is rather scandalous. Just as scandalous is the idea that Hurstwood is also smitten with Carrie. The thing is, Hurstwood already has a wife Julia (Miriam Hopkins) and two teenaged kids. The restaurant manager job is a good one that puts the Hurstwoods on the cusp of being upper-middle-class, with the prospect of marrying off the kids to people of better economic status. But if it were to be found out that George is lusting after someone young enough to be his daughter, well that might be a problem.

And then George does something profoundly stupid. At the end of the day at Fitzgerald's, George makes a mistake with the time lock on the restaurant's safe, leaving him with about $10,000 that he can't get in the safe. Now, the right thing to do would be to contact the owner of the restaurant, although that would have been a bit time consuming for 1900. Instead, George decides he's going to run off with the money, but not before picking up Carrie and bringing the two of them to New York. George also rather stupidly blows through the money in double-quick time. Sure enough, Fitzgerald sends men to New York to look for Hurstwood, who can't really keep a job in the restaurant business once his past is discovered.

Things get even worse when George's son is about to get married. Julia wants to sell the house, but George has to co-sign to sell. The thing is, he's still married to Julia, despite having told Carrie that he'd gotten a divorce. And by this time Carrie has gotten knocked up. But while George keeps going downhill, there's a third act for Carrie. She lies about her past and says she's been on the stage in Chicago, which gets her a job as a chorus girl with the opportunity to move up in the world. She splits from George hoping that George's son will forgive him, and eventually becomes reasonably big in the theater world, big enough to have a name in noticeable letters on the posters. Both Charles and George see that name, and show up (at different times) at Carrie's dressing room....

I haven't read Sister Carrie, so I can't be specific on what was changed from the book to the movie, although when Alicia Malone presented Carrie on TCM she mentioned that the book had floated around Hollywood for quite some time while people tried to figure out how to make it conform to the Production Code. The movie was not a success at the box office, and having seen it, I think I can understand why. This was supposed to be a prestige production, and the leads all give good enough performances. But at the same time, it feels like there's something a bit off with the movie, like the various characters don't really have the appropriate emotional connection with each other. There's just something flat about the final product.

But give Carrie a try and see for yourself if you like it.