TENDER COMRADE (1943)

More talked about than seen nowadays, it was that title (TENDER COMRADE) that added a touch of infamy to this innocuous WWII trifle about four female defense plant workers pooling their rent money to move from furnished flats to a comfy colonial big enough for a family of ten. Voting on disputed issues, hiring a (Jewish?) German exile to housekeep & cook, stopping now and then for uplifting, patriotic pep talks on why their men are fighting overseas, it’s about as radical as a bond drive. Ginger Rogers, finishing up her R.K.O. contract, found some of the talk a little leftie in hindsight. Hmm . . . by such standards her own STAGE DOOR/’37 might have come under suspicion if it had been called STAGE COMRADE! This all makes the film sound rather more interesting than it is, but don’t you believe it. Director Edward Dmytryk got it about right when he called it maudlin, but personally a welcome step up into A-list projects. His biggest concern: would fave photog Russell Metty please Rogers when she saw the dailies? He was on to something. Ginger looks puffy, her eyes unfocused. More importantly, her old school/studio style acting jars against rising co-star Robert Ryan, leaning forward into a more naturalistic, post-war modernism. But this clash pales next to Trumbo’s lazy, uncomfortably misogynistic script, loaded with bickering flashbacks as wise, warm, manly Ryan condescends to Ginger’s female wiles & hysteria. Ruth Hussey, Patricia Collinge & a young Kim Hunter are the other tenants, each with a single problem to work out; while Mady Christians is the Jewish (?) German war refugee they hire to run the house. Ham-fisted, politically harmless fluff, unworthy of director, writer or Commie Hunter.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Dmytryk would quickly make up for this with MURDER, MY SWEET/’44, and later do right by Ryan in a post-war classic, CROSSFIRE/’47. Trumbo also quickly made good, following up with THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO/’44. OR: For a Hollywood view of the family homefront in action, David O. Selznick’s magnificent, if overripe, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY/’44.