I've put on my owl glasses and cardigan sweater to play a down-and-out Roger Ebert, reviewing movies for these rough economic times at Recessionwire.com.
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The 1930s were a heyday for screwball comedies, rowdy pictures where complications were piled onto complications, until the characters reached their breaking point, crazy stuff happened, hilarity ensued and moviegoers went home happy. In the Great Depression, filmmakers used broad comedy to touch on issues of class and poverty, but kept audiences enthralled with plenty of slapstick that always found some upper crust heel choking on their silver spoon.
Which is why if you’ve seen Made for Each Other—especially when it was first released in 1939—it can only be because you’re a Jimmy Stewart and/or Carole Lombard completist.
On December 12, 1939 producer David O. Selznick changed the course of Hollywood history when Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. It was the centerpiece of his filmic legacy and overshadowed Made for Each Other, a simple comedy that hit closer to home for many Americans: the upheaval on a young marriage brought on by personal finances. It hardly saw the kind of success of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz or Stewart’s beloved Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Made for Each Other garners only one external review on its Netflix page, the Feb. 17 1939 from reviewer Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times. (If you’re curious, Nugent loved it.)
Made for Each Other isn’t anywhere near the class of those three favorites, but it does offer a story that is as relevant today as it was during the Great Depression: Relationships suffer during economically fallow times. Made for Each Other stars the powerhouse duo of James (he wasn’t “Jimmy” yet) Stewart and Carole Lombard as newlyweds Jane and John Mason. The upwardly mobile couple should be enjoying marital bliss, but he can’t handle the stress brought on by his diminishing salary, and she’s falling apart trying to hold everything together. A dying child in the third act changes the tone of the movie (and not for the better), so the movie isn’t entirely successful at showing how little things keep adding up when times are tough. In the strongest scenes, however, Made for Each Other nails how money woes impact relationships, which is a relevant today as it was in 1939, even moreso than plantation life and following yellow-brick roads.
Living under the same roof with John’s mother, the two have another mouth to feed (their new baby), and John isn’t exactly a Master of the Universe at the white shoe law firm where he works. He’s a pushover. We watch as he is passed over for a promotion — and at a dinner party in his own apartment no less.
Tension on the home front hits a breaking point after Jane convinces John, who hardly has her hard-edged determination to demand a partnership and a raise. Naturally, he doesn’t get it – he’s told that times are tight and everyone’s getting a 25% cut in pay. The loss of income means they’re stuck in an apartment with a baby sleeping in the kitchen, a self-loathing husband given to lashing out, a wife who is being driven stir crazy in her own home, and a wet blanket of a mother-in-law who waves off the baby’s first smile by saying it must be “gas.” Things go from bad to worse, until the Masons confront their potential demise and Stewart decides to end the marriage at a bleak New Year’s Eve party. Stewart basically tells her that he’s half a man and she deserves better …Happy 1939. Have some more champagne.
The third act of Made for Each Other abruptly shifts to a mawkish weeper about the couple’s dying baby who needs serum flown in from Salt Lake City to live. (Fun fact: The twist came from a real-life incident in which producer David O. Selznick’s brother Myron needed life-saving serum delivered cross-country.) Stewart has a nice scene of desperation where he wakes up his boss, Judge Doolittle (Charles Coburn) to ask for the $5,000 plane fee, but ultimately the melodramatic sick Mason kid storyline overwhelms the more interesting questions about a crumbling marriage in a crumbling economy.
Made for Each Other aptly shows how economic losses hang over wedded bliss, causing resentment and bile that wasn’t there before. The characters don’t yell, scream and throw their drinks. They seethe, scowl and breathe deep trying to achieve “Serenity Now!” John thinks himself a failure for not being a top dog and Jane takes the brunt of it. Less money, mo’ problems, even though they live in a three-bedroom on Park Avenue and one of the big questions is whether to get rid of the housekeeper. They’re not headed to skid row. As Lily (Louis Beavers), the African-American housekeeper (in one of those guilt-inducing servant roles blacks were forced to play to the hilt in those days) says to Jane, “Savor the watermelon and spit out the seeds.”
The redemptive “get over yourself and realize what you’ve got” theme of Made for Each Other means the movie shares a lot with the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life, minus all that parallel universe stuff. It foreshadows what George Bailey’s life might have been like if he had ended up in New York City. Stewart’s still neurotic, prone to drunken fits of rage, and willing to throw away his family over financial concerns. Hell, the version of Auld Lang Syne is a lot more caustic in Made for Each Other, but then again, John Mason doesn’t have an angel looking over his shoulder. He’s got a human pilot flying through a blizzard.
For good and bad, Americans tend to define themselves through their work (and its accompanying salary), so the Masons saga mirrors what a lot of us are currently struggling through. Economic hardship doesn’t have to mean hopping trains with a hobo sack-tied-to-a-stick to be devastating. It can be tense moments in the living room. Made for Each Other–while a minor film at best–offers simple pleasures and an important reminder during these recessionary times.
Love is the watermelon. Money problems are the seeds. Spit ‘em out.
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