Margaret Sullavan and the Nazis

I went to a double feature in Hollywood the other night that knocked my socks off. The American Cinematheque is having a festival of films that they consider “Overlooked and Underrated,” including many that are not available on DVD. This week they showed two Frank Borzage-directed films, both starring that winsome, unique, and ultimately tragic actress Margaret Sullavan.

What’s the deal with Margaret Sullavan? At the risk of causing a major rift in my marriage, dare I say that her fame has not exactly withstood the test of time? While a huge star in the late 1930s and early 40s, she is rarely discussed today and I would bet that the average person on the street, especially those under 60, have never heard of her, or if they do recognize the name confuse her with Tarzan’s Jane and Mia Farrow’s mom, Maureen O’Sullivan. Not that my household is part of that demographic—Kendall wrote a whole chapter about Margaret Sullavan in her as-yet-unpublished new book and I’ve always been a fan of the actress who I remember in such wonderful films as “The Shopworn Angel” (in which her singing voice was dubbed by Broadway star Mary Martin) and especially Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Shop Around the Corner.” Both of these films co-starred Jimmy Stewart, Sullivan’s frequent on-screen partner. The two of them shared a rare and exquisite chemistry, with Stewart’s hopeful innocence playing off of Sullavan’s troubled sweetness.

It seems like all of Sullavan’s movie characters were simple girls at heart who were plagued by darker forces. Her characters usually managed to avoid or ignore the complexities of their lives for a good part of the movie but ultimately failed to stave off the tragedies that awaited them, most often culminating in the characters’ untimely deaths. Gore Vidal once wrote, “Margaret Sullavan was a star whose deathbed scenes were one of the great joys of the Golden Age of Movies. Sullavan never simply kicked the bucket. She made speeches as she lay dying; and she was so incredibly noble that she made you feel like an absolute twerp for continuing to live out your petty life after she'd ridden on ahead.”

I had never seen either of the films screening at the Cinematheque this week so I eagerly headed over to Hollywood. I was surprised that both were MGM movies (I never considered Sullavan a member of the MGM stock company) but what really floored me was the controversial content of the films. “Three Comrades” was based on a book by Erich Maria Remarkque describing the lives of three disillusioned German World War I vets in 1920s Berlin. The film was made in 1938 when the Nazis were in full power and Europe was moving closer and closer to all-out war. You’d think in the late 1930s MGM would go out of its way to avoid showing Germans in anything but a negative light but the film presented a hopeful, sympathetic portrait of Germany’s position in the world even though there are increasing references to the unnamed Nazi party that was beginning to kick up trouble.

American stars Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, and Robert Young turn in great performances as the three German soldiers. One of the most amazing things about movies like this is seeing the arrogance on the part of American studios to set films in foreign countries without the slightest pretense of actors speaking the native language, having any kind of accent, or even refraining from using the popular American vernacular of the day. Hearing Taylor, Tone, and Young speak in American slang, it took me a moment to realize that we are supposed to accept that they are really German men talking German in Germany. It is the hunky but slightly doltish Robert Taylor who falls for the former aristocrat but now penniless Pat Hollmann played by Margaret Sullavan. But the three male leads are so close, so bonded, that it almost feels like Sullavan is being passed around among them, in some kind of wholesome yet homoerotic ménage à quatre. It’s rare to see such close friendships between men depicted in movies today, although the 1970s classic “The Deer Hunter” was partially based on this story.

One of the major claims to fame of “Three Comrades” is that the script was written by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald during his brief Hollywood years. Desperate for funds, he took several movie gigs, work he found demeaning, but despite some major rewrite work on classics such as “Gone With the Wind,” “Three Comrades” is the only film for which he received screen credit. Of course one of the best things to come out of Fitzgerald’s stint in Hollywood was his unfinished and posthumously published novel “The Last Tycoon,” based on the life of MGM’s wunderkind, Irving Thalberg.

While Fitzgerald’s script sometimes seems a little too literate for its own good, the performances in “Three Comrades” are beyond reproach. I was intrigued by Franchot Tone’s moving portrayal. Tone was married to Joan Crawford during the making of this film but the marriage was already in ruins, with the very private and publicity-shy actor woefully mismatched with Crawford and her legendary obsession with image and career. It was a mutual attraction to Franchot Tone that sparked the famous rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, an animosity that would survive long past the time when Tone would give either one of them the time of day. But despite his infamy as the recipient of romantic attention, I found him to be a subtle, gifted actor.

Having grown up watching Robert Young as the iconic patriarch in TV’s “Father Knows Best” and as the world’s most compassionate doctor in “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” I’m always surprised to be reminded what a huge movie star he was in the 30s and 40s, appearing opposite the most glamorous dames in Hollywood. In “Three Comrades” he plays the most troubled of the German vets, disgusted at the condition of his beloved country, spouting many comments about the hooligans we know are the up-and-coming Nazis.

Young appears again with Sullavan in the second film I saw the other night, 1940’s “The Mortal Storm.” The storyline of this film was even more shocking to me. At this point the war had already begun in Europe, with the United States gearing up to battle Hitler’s forces, and yet, once again, the film begins by presenting an idyllic portrait of the Fatherland in the period leading up to Hitler’s 1933 power grab. This time director Borzage was allowed to mention the Nazis by name and swastika flags, armbands, and other Nazi paraphernalia are visible throughout the film (including a very cool light fixture with swastika cutouts that produced giant swastikas on the walls and ceiling—I wonder how much this prop went for at the MGM auction!). Still, MGM being MGM, the word Jew was never uttered in the film, even though it’s quite obvious that the Frank Morgan character, Margaret Sullavan’s beloved university professor father, was supposed to be a Jew married to an “Aryan” woman. All of the Jews in “The Mortal Storm” are referred to as “non-Aryans,” a euphemism I found absurd. Who were they afraid of offending, Jews or Nazis? Notice the total lack of Nazis in the poster for the film. You'd think the story was set in Brooklyn.

Everyone in the small German town worships Morgan’s character who is celebrating his 60th birthday when the film opens. But it all changes that first night when it is announced that Hitler has become the new German Chancellor. Margaret Sullavan’s Freya Roth has just announced her engagement to Robert Young’s Fritz Marberg, who is already like a second son to Morgan. There’s a great moment when the news about Hitler comes in and we are all expecting wonderful, kindly Fritz to greet the news with horror. Instead, he jumps for joy at the report and whips Freya’s Aryan half-brothers into a frenzy about all the great things Hitler is going to do for Germany. Fritz’s best friend, Martin Breitner, played by Jimmy Stewart, finally registers the horror we had hoped to see in our leading man, and after Robert Young continues his transformation into a full-fledged Nazi out to purify the German race, Sullavan switches her allegiance to the “good German” played by Stewart.

Although this film was made at a time when the atrocities of the Final Solution had not yet begun, it does depict the endless persecution faced by Jews in Germany in the early 1930s including being stripped of their livelihoods and being thrown into concentration camps. We see Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, being visited in a German concentration camp by his loyal wife, played by the imperial Irene Rich, but no mention is made of the Nuremburg Laws, already in effect in Germany, that prohibited marriages between Aryans and Jews.

The film boasts a gaggle of other meaty characters including Dan Dailey as a violent young Nazi leader (how would the Nazis have reacted if they knew about Dailey’s penchant for crossdressing?), Maria Ouspenskaya as Stewart’s elderly mother (at least she had an accent even if it was the wrong one), and 16-year-old Bonita Granville who plays a simpleton maid with a wild crush on Jimmy Stewart. Throughout the film, poor Bonita is constantly being attacked behind closed doors by the Nazi thugs (it’s pretty obvious they’re having their way with her) forcing the poor girl to give up Stewart’s whereabouts again and again. Today happens to be Bonita Granville’s birthday (she would have been 84 but died of cancer in 1988) and I can’t help but think of her other big movie about this topic, “Hitler’s Children” in which Granville plays an American citizen of German descent who gets trapped in Germany when the war breaks out and is forced to join the Hitler Youth program and adopt the ideals of Nazism. I think “Hitler’s Children” is an amazing film but compared to “The Mortal Storm” it is about as subtle as the kick of a stormtrooper’s boots.

Needless to say, poor Margaret Sullavan doesn’t survive either film. From the moment she lets out with a little cough in “Three Comrades,” we know she's doomed. After changing the lives of the three male leads, she succumbs to a bad case of tuberculosis. At least in movies such deaths are elegant and ladylike. Sullavan's demise is much more violent in “The Mortal Storm.” She is gunned down by the Nazis (under orders from former fiancé Marcus Welby) seconds before skiing to safety across the border. Oy.

In real life, Sullavan’s end was no less tragic. Following two brief and troubled marriages (to actor Henry Fonda and director William Wyler), Margaret married agent and producer Leland Hayward with whom she had three children. It was her oldest daughter Brooke Hayward who penned “Haywire,” one of the best memoirs ever written about Hollywood. Sullavan tried to make family life work but her marriage to Hayward was not working out, she suffered from serious depression, and her children Bridget and Bill had their own mental problems (culminating in Bridget’s suicide at the age of 21). On January 1, 1960, the 48-year-old Sullavan was found dead in a Connecticut hotel room. The authorities believed she had taken a deliberate overdose of barbiturates but some people, including Kendall, don’t believe the actress intended to commit suicide. In any event, she had been quite miserable. Sullavan was appearing in a new play headed for Broadway. In an interview published just before her death, she said, “The theater is a cruel place, a horrible place. Oh, you don’t know how difficult it is to make myself come back to it. It is hell.”

Poor sad Margaret Sullavan. If you’re listening, know that for us it is absolute heaven watching you in your short but powerful body of work.

Comments

[Wendy]

Oh Danny HOW COULD YOU? How could you have given away the ending in "The Mortal Storm"? You should have at least posted a spoiler alert at the beginning of the blog. Bad bad Danny. I bet Kendall will agree with me!

[Danny]

Oh damn, Wendy, you're right! It never occurred to me to post a Spoiler warning about a 67-year-old film but I should have.

Just kidding, folks, Margaret doesn't die at all, and the Nazis decide to leave the Jews alone. They make Frank Morgan the Wizard of Deutschland.

[Your Wife]

Darling, sometimes I hate you for being such a better writer than me! Can I please steal the title of this post for my chapter? But just to clarify my own position on dear Margaret Sullavan's end --since obviously you don't really listen to anything I say -- all I said was there is doubt about her death. Suicide or possible accident, no one can be sure. And whatever she wanted to do is ok by me. I'm all for choice at both ends of life. Darling, I love being in our own crazy demographic together. Margaret Sullavan and the Nazis pretty much describes it!

[Kitty]

Having read and loved "Haywire" many years ago, it for some reason didn't occur to me that I'd never seen Margaret Sullavan in a film. I recently discovered her through a Netflix rental of "The Good Fairy", an absolutely charming film that caused me to fall in love with her AS WELL as with Herbert Marshall, whom I'd never seen before either. That led to "The Shop Around the Corner", and I'm now a huge fan of this wonderful actress.

Your post also reminds me that I MUST get to Cinematheque more often, not just for the Noir festival once a year...

[churlita]

I had heard of her before, but I've never actually seen her in a film. Thanks for such a great post. I will definitely have to rent some of her movies.

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

I loved Margaret Sullivan, and still do! And I LOVED these two films....It is interesting what you said about "THE MORTAL STORM" never referring to the Jews by name, but only as Non-Aryans...but I must tell you Danny, as a young person watching this film back 'in the day', there was never any doubt in my mind who they were talking about. You must remember 'jews' were rarely mentioned by name in films until way after the War ended...the late 40's and early 50's and even then, the mentions were few and far between...Still, I remember feeling the threat very clearly in "The Mortal Storm"...."Three Comrades" was a favorite of mine, too...those three beautiful leading men---ALL gorgeous and good, too....I guess if one grew up during the time these were made, one accepted the conventions---no accents, etc. especially if one, (me) was young, which I was.
"THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER"....A sublime film if ever there was one. And the beautiful sweet dear musical of this fabulous film was a perfect perfect musical in every way, with the young Barbara Cook in the Margaret Sullivan part....Joyce V. P. and I saw this about three times, first seeing it when we arrived in New York for reheardsals of "Spoon River"..."SHE LOVES ME" was such a faithful rendering of this very special film....And ALL the cast of the movie, including Frank Morgan, once again...(What a fantastic group of character actors there were back then---) and Anne Franks father....you know who I mean, and that other fabulous actor who was in "TO BE OR NOT TO GE"--the "original" who then played the other man who worked in Matacheks....Ahhhhhh, what a film...and Jimmy & Margaret...the perfect couple....I could watch that movie over and over and over and have. Did you ever see "SHE LOVES ME"?)
Dear Margaret Sullivan had such demons, they say....but she had something quite special on the screen and on the stage too! You are so right, Danny....Who under 60 knows or remembers and reveres her besides you and Kendall? A Shanda, really!

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

Joseph Shildkraut and Felix Bresser....!
OY! The synapses are s-l-o-w....Those are the two actors I was trying to think of....
Felix Bressart was the one in "TO BE OR NOT TO BE"--(Jack Benny-Carole Lombard) that had the spech from MERCHANT OF VENICE....."....If you prcck us do we not bleed?"...Now there was a movie movie, too!
"So they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt?" Another Fabulous actor....Oh Shot! I cannot think of his name either...and I know it like I know yours, Danny!

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

SIG RUMAN!!!! (Spelling?)
I'll stop! LOL!

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

Okay...Both these films...SHOP and TO BE OR....
Directed by Lubitsch...(Now that spelling looks wierd...) Great Director!

NOW, I'm done....LOL!

[Bob Civin]

Thanks for taking along me on your trip down Memory Lane, Danny.

Sullavan was the stuff of my adolescent dreams. She was wholesome beauty personified -- and, oh, that voice!

Watching The Little Shop Around the Corner on Turner Classic Movies is a highpoint of my annual Yuletide celebration.

I never saw Three Comrades -- from the Remarque novel of the same name. However, I did see and enjoy The Mortal Storm made from a popular novel by now forgotten Phyllis Bottome.

In the movie, the book was bowdlerized more than a bit to meet the requirements of the Breen Office.

The heroine didn't die in the novel. There, the "good German" played by Jimmy Stewart had impregnated his girl before attempting to escape over the border. Alas, he didn't succeed. He was shot by border guards. And his girl goes to live with his peasant mother (Ouspenskaya in the movie) and bear his child.

Also, in the book, the hero is identified as a member of the Communist resistance. I doubt that Stewart, a solid Republican, would have wanted any part of that even if it had been allowed.

We have to remember though that in those innocent times, many viewed Communists not only as anti-Nazis but as good democrats at heart.

Bob C.
I

[Mark Daniels]

I, too, love Sullavan, although I've only seen her in 'The Shop Around the Corner.' She seems so vulnerable and principled. And she was beautiful. They say that she was difficult to work with, moody. (I've wondered if she didn't suffer from bipolar disorder.) But it's also said that James Stewart could work with her and that he seemed to have a particular sensitivity that allowed him to absorb her moodiness and make her feel accepted. My guess is that, at some level, he loved her.

In some respects, Meg Ryan was the perfect choice to play the Sullavan character in 'You've Got Mail,' the Nora Ephron reincarnation of 'The Shop Around the Corner.' Yet, Sullavan's cuteness seems more incidental than Ryan's, which appears to be more studied. (But I do love Ryan, I should add.)

One other thing, relating to accents. Only a few of the actors in 'Shop' bothered with them there either. In a way, there's a certain wisdom to that. Often, accents are so horribly rendered that you think more about them than about the story itself.

As usual, Danny, a wonderful post. I love reading your blog!

Mark Daniels

[V-Grrrl]

Danny,

The truth is I am clueless about most of the films and actors you cover in your posts on old Hollywood, and yet I always read them for your insight and an "education" on all I've missed on film. Great writing.

[Bob Civin]

Mark Daniel guesses that "at some level" Jimmy Stewart loved Margaret Sullavan.

That my well be true. Industry yentas of the period wrote that there was indeed a love affair between the two. Informed opinion held that Stwewart proposed to her but was rejected.

Bob Civin

[Kate]

"You’d think in the late 1930s MGM would go out of its way to avoid showing Germans in anything but a negative light "

Yet I've heard that those working on "Mrs. Miniver" had to fight to make the downed German flyer a villain, and that came out in 1942.

[Danny]

It's true. The Jewish studio heads were constantly worried about alienating their large German audiences even though American films obviously weren't being shown there during the war. Oy.

[Mindy]

Just ordered The Shop Around The Corner.

Reading your blog has had a tremendous impact on my dvd collection! I also ordered The Ghost and Mrs. Muir with Gene Tierney, which has nothing to do with this blog other than I really like that old movie. Tee Hee.

[Bernie]

I would like to know if Margaret Sullivan's father's kin came from Ireland. I peddled papers and show bills during her ascendency in movies and loved her then, and now. There was ab expression in her looks and acting that is/was just great, not to be copied. Bernie

[Jonathan McMillan]

I recall Frank Capra explaining in his autobiography, "The Name Above the Title," that both before and during America's involvement in WWII; studio heads were very hesitant against using Jewish-styled comedians or even indicating that a character was of the Hebrew faith because they didn't want to give the Nazi propoganda machine any ammunition with which to use to point at and fire against the Hebrew nation. We all know what lying, bullying, cowards those people were and how they would have had a field day with any material that they could twist to their own sick devices.

Jon McMillan

[Daryl Chin]

Just wanted to note that last month (March 9, to be exact, though the family did NOT release the information until two weeks later), William Leland Hayward died, of what was described in the obituary (NY Times) as a "self-inflicted gunshot wound".

His mother, Margaret Sullavan, and his sister, Bridget Hayward, both died within a year of each other in 1960-61, of (accidental or deliberate) suicides.

Funny thing: i always associated Margaret Sullavan as a star from the MGM heyday, because during the 1950s and 1960s, the films of hers that were most readily available on TV and in revival were THREE COMRADES, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, THE MORTAL STORM, and THE SHOPWORN ANGEL. Later on, i was surprised to find out that her tenure at MGM lasted only 5 years, for a total of 7 films.

[LINDA LEAR]

AFTER WATCHING THE CLASSIC MOVIE ' THREE COMRADES ' I ONLY WISH MY WONDERFUL , AMAZING , FAVORITE ACTOR ' FRANCHOT TONE ' WAS THE LOVE INTEREST INSTEAD OF ROBERT TAYLOR WHO TO ME APPEARED AWKWARD AND UNEASY IN THIS FILM. WHERE AS FRANCHOT TONE'S PERFORMANCE WAS FAR MORE OUTSTANDING , SWEETER AND HAD MUCH BETTER CHEMISTRY WITH SULLIVAN THEN TAYLOR. HE WAS ALWAYS STUCK PLAYING THE SECOND OR THIRD LEAD WHEN HE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER FROM HOLLYWOOD , THEY OBVIOUSLY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THEY HAD !

[john]

I'm grateful to learn I'm not the only person today who adores the incomparable Margaret Sullavan. Her many qualities -- aside from her rare luminescence and rich, resonant voice -- may be otherwise hard to define. I've read that in life she was comely but short, snaggle-toothed and by all accounts prone to unhappiness and severe depression. Yet from the first moment I saw her on screen (in The Little Shop Around the Corner) I was utterly bewitched. I also think it likely that she chose such prophetic anti-war/anti-Nazi films such as Three Comrades and The Mortal Storm by conviction, not by accident. This suggests, in additional to her other assets, that Margaret Sullavan was possessed by a moral and intellectual courage. After all, in the 1930's Hollywood studios -- and MGM in particular -- avoided shadowy European political themes for fear that such topical matters would erode their lucrative European markets. Yes, shame on the studio system. And kudos to the radiant Margaret Sullavan for using her stardom to enlighten, inform and captivate US audiences. I've since made a point of watching all 16 film she ever made at least twice, and if she struck even one false note I've never detected it. Quite simply, she is perfection.

[Fan Classic Movies]

Hello. I've just come across your blog on Margaret Sullavan. Thanks a lot. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's interested in her movies. Please join my group if you would like to talk about Margaret and her movies.

[Mike K]

I just found your blog and enjoy the comments about Maggie. I'll be back.

[Lisa Merle Hawkins]

Re. Margaret Sullavan - Right on, Danny! I'd also been trying to figure why she's not better remembered. Always so charming and a bit more down-to-earth and natural (she wasn't as "gussied up" as many of the big stars, though I love overdone Hollywood fashion myself!). Margaret Sullavan, Teresa Wright, Dorothy McGuire - all very elegant and natural beauties. Wonderful to watch and they all seem "approachable", too. Pesach Sameach to you and your family! Give my regards to Hollywood!

[abel posadas]

OK,but nowadays it is possible to swallow NO SAD SONGS FOR ME thanks to the performances and specially the one by Ms Sullavan

Regards

abel posadas

[Don]

Just recently I seen (again) "The shop around the corner" and once again I fell in Love with Margaret. What a wonderful and beautiful woman. It sadden me to know that she had such a miserable marriage(s) and family life. Rest in peace Margaret. To me, you were the greatest.

[diane]

I just watched Shop Around the Corner for the first time and Google Margaret Sullavan as I am one of those who confused her with Mia Farrow's mother. : ) Enjoyed your writeup immensely and I will check out these other films as well.

[Mimi Stratton]

The Mortal Storm depicted Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) in compelling and realistic scenes--the ominous neighbor-against-neighbor violence that occurred on November 9-10, 1938. Kristallnacht kicked off efforts to ramp up economic and political persecution of Jews and was part of Nazi Germany's broader racial policy at the beginning of The Final Solution and the Holocaust.
It's a fine film and one I wish everyone will continue to view and learn from.

[Mary Rules]

The film "The Mortal Storm" is about a period in Germany that begins in 1933. So many of the things you say were happening in 1940 when it came out were not yet happening when the film is supposed to be taking place. Yes, the studios were not allowed to say certain things, but it got the message across.

Margaret Sullavan is dazzling in the film.

Hitler banned this movie, because it was so anti-Nazi.

[Lisa Nealy]

I loved Shop around the corner and The mortal storm. Margaret was beautiful in both!