After a decade writing @ Paramount & a decade producing for M-G-M, Joseph L. Mankiewicz added directing to his shingle moving to 20th/Fox, learning on the job helming three Philip Dunne screenplays in a row: GEORGE APLEY; THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR; ESCAPE.* Dunne’s adaptation significantly softening an already coarsened B’way play of John P. Marquand's Pulitzer prize winning novel about a Boston-centric eccentric, a turn-of-the-last century father holding fast to dying traditions while his children move past a stultifying tradition that rejects anything too far removed from Beacon Hill. Percy Waram, the sole holdover from the B’way production, almost steals the pic as Apley’s sceptical, open-minded brother-in-law (Waram, a stage vet who made few films, showing a precision that’s something to wonder at). But the film was obviously designed to showcase Ronald Colman, charming, bemused & befuddled in one of his last roles as the eponymous Apley who gets less a comeuppance from his family on changing times than a gentle tutorial. It’s pleasant, low-wattage entertainment, the play and film designed to ride on the commercial backdraft of the phenomenally successful, broader domestic comedy of LIFE WITH FATHER, still running on B’way and opening as a film the same year as this. You’ll note a few weak links in the cast, and the odd editing bump, but Mankiewicz was always more interesting as a director working on other people’s screenplays than he was of his own scripts which he treated with kid gloves as sacrosanct text.
DOUBLE-BILL: *As noted above, the other Dunne projects are quite good with ESCAPE not quite hitting its potential, but MRS. MUIR a modest masterpiece with exceptional perfs, awesome Bernard Herrmann score and an uncredited Mankiewicz secretly rewriting all the scenes with George Sanders, giving hints of their work together in ALL ABOUT EVE.
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