After his pitch-perfect debut directing A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN/’45, Elia Kazan did war service & a pair of B’way plays before returning for seconds, and the traditional Sophomore Slump. It must have sounded like a good idea: a classic cattleman vs. homesteader Western, but with the confrontation seen from the perspective of the cattle baron’s East Coast wife, an unhappy transplant who briefly falls to temptation with her husband’s main nemesis, but still comes home to have her lover’s child. Even more interesting, the cruel land gives nothing but hard answers while the illegitimate child ends up being favored by ‘Dad’ over his half-sister. But where Kazan got nothing but support and a gift of a cast @ 20th/Fox on BKLN, over @ M-G-M, all the major decisions were already made by producer Pandro Berman & the department heads before Kazan was off the train from NYC. And though he ended up liking Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn, he didn’t like them for the parts. Equally miscast, Hepburn all sharp edges and eyes brimming with regret/Tracy mushy soft and resigned. Worse, a story all about the land entirely faked using backscreen projection & studio mockups. (Second unit location inserts all in long shot, made without the stars . . . and without Kazan.) And a final thirty minutes where the kids, suddenly grown into Robert Walker & Phyllis Thaxter, speed the action to quick unsatisfying resolutions and an inexplicably hopeful tag end. Commercially, a big hit (wouldn't you know) and the only film Kazan was ashamed of making.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Kazan had his revenge on his third (released second) pic, BOOMERANG!/’47, filmed largely on location in Stamford, Connecticut.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: Kazan’s self-justifying auto-bio (A LIFE) can be a bit of a pain, but the chapter on GRASS is a great look (both hilarious and appalling) into the compromises & insanities of M-G-M corporate moviemaking as Golden Age Hollywood began its post-WWII collapse.
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