Even though we gloss things in biopics maybe a different way — and for different reasons — than in earlier decades, those honest portrayals do transcend. I need to watch Dr. Ehrlich’s MB!!

I suspect that biopics from the studio era, which I find are sort of addictive, even when I know how wildly inaccurate they can be, helped the movie studios feel respectable and audiences to feel uplifted, even if they are amusingly boring at times. On the other hand, they encapsulate such optimism about the future and the real hopes of Americans that their ideals will become reality, that I can’t help but be touched by the best of them.

This is especially true when an actor transcends the earthbound script with a moving characterization, as I discovered recently when viewing Edward G. Robinson in Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940). While the Production Code prevented the filmmakers from explicitly discussing the STDs that Ehrlich treated, along with other illnesses, Eddie’s matter of fact, humane approach to his part was so good that I did get misty eyed near the end of the story–and in a novel twist, Dr. Ehrlich wasn’t even an American!

My favorite biopic from this period is probably Roughly Speaking (1945), the story of Louise Randall Pierson, a woman whose life, on the surface, was nothing but a failure, but was in reality the picaresque adventures of a survivor. Great stuff, with very likable performances by Rosalind Russell & Jack Carson, neither of whom allows any false nobility to overwhelm their characterizations.