"Great America" remembered, staring Cary Grant

September 7, 2016

In only a month mail-in voting will begin, one selection to endorse making "America Great Again" by electing a President to take us to this somewhat hazy place.  I got a glimpse of it last week watching the 1951 comedy,  "People Will Talk" played by a media star of that time, who had the charisma to make the film a hit.  

Dr. Noah Praetorius was not only played by, but was the Cary Grant, in all his self assured handsomeness, enhanced with the authority of being a physician with the added panache of flaunting his use of unproven alternative treatments.  In thinking about this films popularity, that exists to this day,  I realized that Dr. Praetorius and Donald J. Trump reflect the same archetypes in the unconscious mythologies of our nation.

The theme of this film, before the social revolutions of the 1960s where even imagined, still exist in our hopes and fears today  As an example, there was not a single black actor in the entire film; not a student or professor or even sprinkled among the audience of a concert.  Cary Grant's  hero doctor was lauded for his stalwart independence, not only the right to deceive a pregnant college student telling her "the test was in error," but then to have a private conversation with the natural guardian of this adult, her father, about how to proceed in her "management." It would be the men who would decide her fate.  An early abortion for this accidental pregnancy was never even mentioned as an option, as the choice was her marrying the doctor or suicide, attempted before, but treated as a joke in the film.

The movie world of 1950s depicted in "People Will Talk" is what Donald Turmp promises to bring back. While today's candidate boasts that he could kill a random person without any loss in his popularity, Grant's Dr. Praetorius presaged this by revealing that his close companion was a man who had murdered someone in public.  Ah, but his friend was a stalwart, kind person, who loved dogs and had bonded with our hero; so his confession, under the laws of human nature that then, as well as now, prevail over rational evaluation. He was given instant amnesty; and in addition he was bestowed the authority to deliciously demolish the character who had been investigating our confident, iconoclastic hero-doctor.
    

For the audience of 1951 and those who have praised the film on the internet over the years, the denouement fit the world around them.  The character who ended up being despised was not the charming doctor or the kindly murderer; but the scold who tried to call such people to account.  The film's popularity was a celebration of the America of that time that one presidential candidate now offers to restore.  

A short feature often shown with movies of that era documented the world news of the day, ending with a stentorian ominous voice intoning , "Time Marches On."   We knew it meant in one direction only, that if we failed to rise to the emerging challenges there would be consequences that were not reversible.  We could enjoy the zany comedies, the happy endings on the feature film without guilt;  but fiction ended when we walked out of the darkened theater into a world that we, as citizens of a democracy, were responsible for shaping.