The 13 year old Dorothy McGuire who stepped on a stage in her native Omaha, Nebraska opposite a young Henry Fonda in a production of James M. Barrie’s “A Kiss For Cinderella”, may not have seemed a likely star, but she seems to have been an instinctive actress already, encouraged by her parents and the coaching of Dorothy Pennebaker Brando, (the gifted, troubled mother of Marlon and Jocelyn). After college, some stock company work and understudying Martha Scott as “Emily” in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in New York, (seen at right with playwright Wilder and co-star John Craven), the young thespian landed the ingenue role in a self-destructive John Barrymore‘s chaotic last Broadway-bound hit, My Dear Children. Perhaps seeing the critical handwriting on the wall as the unwieldy mess careened toward New York, McGuire had the perception to quit the show, perhaps understanding that making her NY debut attached to this particular production would not add luster to her résumé. Such unusual independence in a hungry young actress reportedly earned McGuire the respect of both Barrymore, (who knew his behavior on and off stage was unprofessional, to say the least), and the director of that show, Otto Preminger.

Dorothy McGuire‘s breakthrough role came with the Broadway play Claudia by Rose Franken, which, according to those who saw it in 1941, was “an electrifying experience. They saw a pretty, pug-nosed little woman articulate, with something of the luminous other-worldliness of Maud[e] Adams and with some resourceful, intelligent acting–a Golden Treasury of U.S. schoolgirlishness.”  Playing an upper middle class child bride unfamiliar with the realities of adult life until a pending family tragedy awakens her, McGuire was soon courted by Hollywood, where her distinctively natural appearance in an age of sometimes elaborate female artifice made her stand out in a crowd. “Discovered”  by no less a producer than David O. Selznick, the actress found herself under contract to a distracted mogul. Selznick, beginning his involvement with young Phyllis Isley (aka Jennifer Jones), and seeking to find cash for his numerous projects quickly, ordered innumerable tests for the increasingly self-conscious actress, whom he described in some of his memos as believing “[she was] a daughter of the pixies” with a bad case of “the ‘cutes’”.  Eventually, after the umpteenth screen test revealed that “somebody must have told Dorothy that she was moving about too much”, he realized that “in attempting to do a little gilding of this very odd, funny kind of a lily, we might be destroying it…”

At various points in pre-production, Selznick had wanted Jennifer Jones or Phyllis Thaxter for the role of Claudia, (playing opposite–he’d hoped–Cary Grant, as the patient husband). In the end, strapped for cash, and short on patience with the author who continued to insist on Dorothy in the role, he sold the property to 20th Century Fox, where McGuire was given the assignment of the role she’d created on stage at the insistence of the director, Edmund Goulding, who had been bewitched by the play and the original manner of the original leading lady since the play was in previews. Appearing opposite the underrated Robert Young for the first of three times, the  pair would produce some of their most sensitive moments together on-screen in their careers, complementing one another believably as the young couple.  Seen today, the problems of the girlish bride and her architect husband in Claudia (1943) and its popular sequel, Claudia and David (1946), may strike some viewers as a quaint trifle, but, there is a charm in Young‘s calm bemusement at the antics of his effervescent wife and in McGuire‘s endearing performance. Underlying the frothy surface, there is also an underlying anxiety between the pair, an unspoken understanding by both spouses that this phase of their lives cannot last, but might only be savored for a brief time before more adult concerns crowd into their small world. In the wartime forties, I suspect that the radiant McGuire‘s fey character, her confused struggle against maturity and her yearning for it, may have touched a neglected part of audiences’ war-hardened hearts. As Young‘s increasingly ambivalent mix of love, wonder and frustration with this girl builds throughout the film, her character undergoes a believable sea change, assisted by the meticulous production supervised by Goulding. This is particularly evident in the director’s skill in allowing seamless long takes throughout the large single set, which reflects Fox’s noted attention to detail in art direction. With a camera that follows “the actors around, eavesdrops on their dialogue, sits down on the next chair, or even runs upstairs beside them, [the camera moves] as freely as the actors themselves.” Claudia (1943), which, as far as I know, is not commercially accessible on vhs or dvd, does show up on cable occasionally, though I hope that Dorothy McGuire‘s debut performance, and a beguiling entertainment, will someday be available.

While still under contract to Selznick, (who financed his projects by largely by loaning out his stable of actors),  the busy actress found herself working with some of Hollywood’s very best directors. 1945 may have been one of the most remarkable years in Dorothy McGuire‘s early career. Playing a mute in director Robert Siodmak‘s stylish take on an old fashioned suspense story, RKO’s The Spiral Staircase, (on TCM on 11/08/08 at 8PM ET), the actress tackled a pantomime role as a New England girl rendered voiceless by the shock of seeing her parents perish in a fire.  That this well made story continues to entertain audiences to this day is a testament to the craftsmen who crafted its familiar outlines, particularly the work of cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca and special effects director Vernon Walker, whose haunting dramatic and gothic compositions and the psychological use of imaginary moments as a means of escape are highlights of the fast paced 84 minute movie, an example of which may be viewed in this clip. One of the most striking of the sequences occurs when the viewer is drawn into McGuire‘s imagination as she gazes inwardly at her own thoughts while before an elaborate mirror. Dorothy is lost in a reverie as she enjoys a brief moment of private reflection, perhaps as she tries to picture herself as the bride of a compassionate doctor, played by Kent Smith. This daydream takes a nightmarish turn when the girl, observed unknowingly by an unseen man, is seen without a mouth; a vivid image that gives this film a moment more disturbing than anything done by the mad strangler.  The large cast included Ethel Barrymore, George Brent, Rhonda Fleming, Sara Allgood, Rhys Williams and Elsa Lanchester and the innovative musical score by Roy Webb incorporating the theremin added to the film’s overall effectiveness, (with the key assistance of Constantin Bakaleinikoff and Samuel Hoffman).  Perhaps the best moments belong to McGuire‘s character, who becomes a target for a strangler who targets those whose physical afflictions mark them as “flawed” in his pyschotic view. As McGuire‘s character helplessly attempts to communicate the terror she is feeling in the oppressive atmosphere of the grand house where she cares for Barrymore and in the outside world where her “imperfection” separates her from others, a viewer can’t help being increasingly drawn to seeing life from her perspective, thanks to her empathetic performance. Without a word,  giving an eloquently silent performance (until the last moment), McGuire, did not receive any nominations for her role, (though she did hold her own with a disarmingly crusty member of a legendary scene-stealing theatrical family, (appearing above with Ethel Barrymore as cryptic invalid, who did garner a Best Supporting Actress nomination from AMPAS). This film, which may be a near perfect entertainment for a dark November evening, is available on dvd.

The Enchanted Cottage (1945), which teamed Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young again, was directed by actor-director John Cromwell with great care, (and is also being broadcast on TCM on 11/08/08 at 9:30PM ET). As two people who, despite the way that the world sees them, McGuire and Young are transformed, at least in their eyes, by the love they feel for one another. Adapting a highly sentimental post WWI play by  Arthur Wing Pinero, which was written in response to the presence of the mutilated among the general population following the close of the disastrous Great War, Herman Mankiewicz and DeWitt Bodeen, along with other writers, managed to make the story commercially viable for the Second World War. They were helped enormously by the crew and cast, which  included a pianist character played by Herbert Marshall. The cultivated Marshall played a WWI veteran whose had lost his sight in a plane crash, but whose zen-like understanding gave him an ability to understand others, as well as to give life and reality to lines such as “Sometimes I feel that it was before the Argonne that I was blind and that it’s only now that I see.” (Perhaps Marshall‘s real life loss of a leg during the First World War probably helped him to play a person with a disability so well).  The Enchanted Cottage was also helped by an exquisite performance by Mildred Natwick, in only her second movie, who, along with the other professionals managed to bottle old wine in a new bottle for wartime audiences. Young, who was exceptionally good as a bitter young man who had been scarred in a plane fire, has his counterpoint in McGuire’s homely servant, who works in a honeymoon cottage that Young had hoped to rent until his accident caused a break with his superficial fiancee (Hillary Brooke). After spending time with one another, the two embark on a marriage of convenience to provide each of them with companionship. Oliver Bradford (Robert Young) and Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire) are surprised to find that their growing feeling for each other affects their perception of one another. Seen through Laura’s eyes, his disfigurement and the alleged plainness (more of a unibrow look sported by  Dorothy) of Laura is transformed into an ethereal beauty.The sophisticated critics from The New York Times to The New Yorker pretty roundly rejected the story as too unrealistic and sentimental in an age of plastic surgery and cosmetics when it was released. Given the long term damage done to surviving war veterans’ bodies and spirits in every war, as well as the plight of those whom the world designates as somehow unworthy, the search for love continues to be a valid subject.  Despite the possibility of going over the top with sentimentality, the relatively restrained artistry of the leads and the care of the entire production supports the emotional reality that this film illustrates. The deeper allegorical theme of our longing for acceptance and that feeling that arises between two people in love, creating a world of their own, were experiences that many audience members, to this day, can recognize and respond to in this movie. The suspenseful impact of the story becomes increasingly poignant, especially as the lovers realize that their “illusion” of one another’s beauty is not shared by the wider world. McGuire‘s performance was among those that, as commentator David Shipman once pointed out, marked the actress as belonging “to that coterie of players—it included Margaret Sullavan, Betty Field, Martha Scott and Barbara Bel Geddes—whose charm is uncommon, elusive. It is the charm of frank, unpretty features that can for some, at times, take on an amazing beauty.”Despite the fact that this film is held in such affection as a “favorite romantic movie” by so many, unfathomably, it has not been issued on a commercial dvd.

One other Dorothy McGuire film of 1945 that demonstrated a marked change for the budding actress was Elia Kazan‘s first directorial effort for the screen. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), which airs on TCM on Feb. 8th, 2009 at 8PM ET, was based on Betty Smith‘s moving autobiographical novel about a poverty stricken girlhood in a New York tenement in the early years of the 20th century.

The film, cast with some of the best actors in Hollywood, including the phenomenal young actress Peggy Ann Garner as Francie Nolan, the scholastically ambitious, dreamy daughter of the lovable James Dunn, a fine actor whose own painful life mirrored the alcoholism of his character, Johnny Nolan, “The Brooklyn Thrush” who was a charming ne’er-do-well, who eked out a living as a singing waiter. Playing the role of a doomed man, unable to support his family, his hardbitten wife was played by Dorothy McGuire. Desperate and finding herself pregnant a third time, McGuire‘s character scrubs floors in their tenement to help pay their rent. Katie Nolan (Dorothy McGuire) understands her daughter’s abiding love for her father despite all his failings, but as the only steady economic partner in the family, she must be pragmatic and even materialistic. Her character was seen, as Kazan said he intended, as “the person who’s obsessively puritanical.” In addition to his dislike of the what the director described as her primness, Kazan said that he disliked hearing the paternalistic producer of this movie, Louis D. Lighton repeatedly describe McGuire as “Angel”, since he believed that term effectively robbed the actress and the character of her sexuality.

The film, which shows this drawn and disapproving woman from the daughter’s viewpoint for much of the story, erupts when the mother’s desperate isolation and loneliness finally tumbles out in a powerful scene when Peggy Ann Garner must attend her mother while she is in labor. Begging her neglected daughter to read her school compositions to her to distract her from her pain, McGuire explains that, despite the fact that she had to ask Francie to leave school to work, she was proud of her writing, and loved her ability to translate everyday life into something special on paper. At this  moment, Garner realizes that her mother had loved her father, and her, and that her “made up stories” might have some intrinsic value. The viewer is also aware more forcefully than in the painful scenes between husband and wife that had occurred earlier, of the sensual, emotional bond that had existed out of sight of the daughter between husband and wife; one that is glimpsed in McGuire‘s anguished confession to the girl that she misses him James Dunn too.

The plight of McGuire‘s character, which is largely overshadowed throughout this movie by the depth of feeling between Garner and Dunn, (as well as the beautifully realized performance given by Joan Blondell, as McGuire‘s warmhearted, much-married sister), At one point in the film, the mother cries out that she’s never done a mean thing to anyone in her life, but “if she were to die tomorrow, who would miss her?” When I first saw this film, I was overwhelmed by what I felt were the indelibly real situations and the emotions of Peggy Ann Garner as she came to terms with her crumbling family life. As I’ve matured, I think I’ve identified with each character in this story of a family, from James Dunn‘s desperate mixture of regret and hope to the tawdry gaiety of Joan Blondell to the loneliness of Lloyd Nolan‘s cop on a beat. More recently, I’ve begun to cherish and appreciate the determination of Dorothy McGuire‘s courageous, flawed mother.

Perhaps in a fit of artistic perfectionism, Kazan later seemed to regard the movie with only grudging respect. In his autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life (1997), he compared the lyrical yet truthful look at lower working class poverty among the Irish and Austrian immigrants, bizarrely and unfavorably,  to French author, Emile Zola’s 19th century screed against inhuman conditions in the mines in the novel Germinal. Kazan said that he felt that the bitterness in the original story of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn had been softened, and that “there was a patina of conventionalism–the costumes were all too clean, and the people were all too goddamn nice.”  Still, it may also be possible that his disdain for the character embodied so well by Dorothy McGuire in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn provided the actress with the impetus to find something steely and wounded within her for her vivid creation of this struggling woman. Perhaps the film was not as realistic as the director may have wished, and all the casting choices may not have been entirely his own, since he was new to the studio, and had limited influence on the production and was constrained by the Production Code.

To Go to: The Quiet Power of Dorothy McGuire Part II