Roughly Speaking

Tomorrow, June 4, is the birth anniversary of actress Rosalind Russell, so it's unsurprising that TCM is going to be spending a morning and afternoon with her films. One that I hadn't seen before but that was on my DVR was Roughly Speaking, so as is always the case, I watched it in order to be able to write up this post for the upcoming TCM showing.

The opening credits inform us that the movie is based on the then-popular autobiographical memoir of the same title, Roughly Speaking, but author Louise Randall Pierson, who also wrote the screenplay and was credited as a technical advisor on the movie. Fast backward to 1902. Louise Randall (to be played as an adult by Rosalind Russell) is the younger daughter of John Chase Randall (Ray Collins), who unfortunately has just up and died a few weeks after his 25th anniversary leaving behind a wife and two adolescent daughters. Worse, he also leaves behind a mountain of debt, which forces Mom to sell off most of the family's remaining assets and the family to downsize rather severely.

Dad wanted Louise to get an education and shoot for the stars, but this is New Englans in the early 1900s, so Louise goes off to "business school", the sort of place that taught young women to become typists and other secretarial work, something that Louise takes very well to. She gets a probationary job (Alan Hale in a one-scene cameo is her boss) which is a springboard to a nicer position in New Haven, the home of Yale University. There's the possibility of finding a nice Yalie to get married to!

Sure enough, Louise meets nice Rodney Crane (Donald Woods), who is hoping to go into a career in finance as his father was a bank officer. The two have a whirlwind romance and get married, with Louise rather progressively for the time keeping her name. The two live happily, although not ever after. The couple have four kids before World War I comes along. After that comes the family moving out to the suburbs, only for the kids to get polio to varying degrees. Louise remains impossibly perky through all of this. So perky, in fact, that when Rodney loses his job in the post-war recession, it's then that he's had it with Louise's optimism, leaving for another woman. Louise is the one to seek a divorce, which is on rather amiable terms, and Rodney is never to be seen again.

In any case, Louise is able to find another man in the form of Harold Pierson (Jack Carson). Harold is the playboy son of a horticultural magnate; technically he works as a vice-president for Dad's rose greenhouses but he's never going to advance any further. Harold and Louise are a perfect match in that they'll always love each other for richer or for poorer, but with their personalities leading to it always being for poorer. They have another kid (future Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Pierson), and go through a series of ups and downs. Harold builds his own greenhouses just in time to flood the market to such an extent that they can't pay the mortgages. He then gets a job promoting a new airplane (character actor John Qualen is the designer), again just in time for the Depression to hit.

Still the couple perseveres, until the New York World's Fair of 1939 arrives and presents another opportunity. Except that in the middle of the fair, Germany attacks Poland, leading to the start of the European theater of World War II and the US getting involved a few years later. By this time there are three adult male children for Louise, and since the movie was released in 1945, you know the kids are all going to do their parts....

Roughly Speaking is another of those movies that is episodic in nature and relies much more on the strength of the actors than on the story itself. Unsurprisingly, with Roz Russell and Jack Carson you know that the stars will indeed pull it off. It also has the feel of something that was designed to be a morale-builder. It was released in January 1945, with World War II still raging. The story of a woman who suffered a whole bunch of personal setbacks and persevered is one that I can imagine would have resonated with audiences, capped with her making the sacrifice of seeing her kids go off to war.

Doing a bit of reading, it's interesting to see what liberties were taken with real life, but that's not such a big deal considering that's standard practice and for audiences 80 years on one can easily look at Roughly Speaking as though it weren't in fact about real people. It's a great example of the sort of entertainment Hollywood served up for the home front during World War II, and one you should take the chance to see.