jacobs-greenwood
Directed by Clarence Brown, who received six unrewarded Best Director Academy Award nominations throughout his career, with a story by Hugo Butler and Dore Schary, who shared a Best Writing, Original Story Oscar nomination for their work on this one, with a screenplay by Bradbury Foote and Talbot Jennings, this above average biographical drama features Spencer Tracy in the title role as Thomas A. (Alva) Edison. Rita Johnson plays his wife, the former Mary Stillwell, and Lynne Overman plays a longtime friend from the inventor's days as a telegrapher, James J. Cavatt. The rest of the highly recognizable cast of prolific performers includes: Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart, Henry Travers, Felix Bressart, Byron Foulger, Gene Reynolds, Grant Mitchell, and Paul Hurst. Additionally, Irving Bacon, Harlan Briggs, Jimmy Conlin, Frank Faylen, and Charles Lane are among those who appear uncredited.The story, told in flashback, begins with Edison (Tracy) arriving in New York to get a job working with someone he knows as a fellow telegraph operator, Cavatt (Overman) nicknamed Bunt. Unfortunately his friend is heading West for other opportunities, but Overman's Uncle Ben Els (Travers) is willing to let him take his nephew's job, helping him with cleaning up the building. Uncle Ben lives in the basement of a business establishment owned by Mr. Taggart (Lockhart), and eventually the tinkerer Edison gets past Taggart's secretary, Edwin Hall (Foulger), when a stock ticker device fails and the future inventor is able to fix it on the spot, to the relief of many anxious businessmen. One of those is an important official with Western Union, General Powell (Coburn), who is intrigued enough with Edison to give him a desk and a job in his laboratory. Edison has several ideas for a better stock ticking device, and many of the workman are assigned to assist him including Michael Simon (Bressart), who was going to be let go until Edison saved his job. While working there, Edison meets his future wife, Mary Stillwell (Johnson), who understands Morse code because she too is a telegrapher. Conlin plays a waiter on their lunch date. When Edison has finally got a device to replace Taggart's inferior stock ticker, Mary suggests that Tom wait until the businessman makes him an offer instead of telling him what he'd thought the invention was worth. In a gloriously amusing scene, Edison ends up getting a check for $40,000 from Powell, after which Taggart gloats that they were prepared to go as high as $60,000 before Edison says he'd have settled for $2,000!Edison and Mary get married and the inventor uses the money to build and open his own laboratory in Menlo Park, employing all those he'd worked with previously (and more?) under Taggart. Over a five year period, Mary gives birth to a daughter and then a son while Tom and his fellow technicians scrape by with a few other patents. But the business's bills far exceed its income such that Edison is near financial ruin. Uncle Ben and his nephew come for a visit just in time for Bunt to distract the Sheriff (Hurst) from serving his injunctions. Edison has a week to invent something in order to keep the business from going under. Uncle Ben suggests that he work on his incandescent light idea, and the inventor struggles with it non- stop for days while getting grouchy with Mary. But the deadline comes and goes because all of his employees decide to forgo their pay, deciding instead to keep working. Edison had tried to go to Taggart and General Powell for financial assistance, but the General was on his death bed and Taggart wanted too much control in return for a $100,000 investment. It's about this time that Edison begins helping someone who was working on something that the inventor thought was nothing, but this leads to his inventing the voice recording device (e.g. the phonograph). The success of this invention clears up the money woes such that Edison and his men are able to concentrate all their efforts on electric light (e.g. to replace gas), and he hires a young man wanderer that reminds him of himself, Jimmy Price (Reynolds). Before Edison gets too far with this particular problem, his friend Bunt is shown to tell the press prematurely that he'd solved it, which causes bad publicity against the inventor; Lane's character delivers one of these speeches.After Edison figures out that his incandescent light will only work in a vacuum, hence a glass bulb is needed and, after thousands of experiments, they discover the right material for a filament, the light bulb is invented. After perfecting other details, Edison proposes to light a district within the city free of charge to prove the overall worth of electric light. Naturally Taggart, who owns a lot of gas stock, uses his representative Shade (Mitchell) to make it harder on the inventor - an unrealistic (six month) deadline is proposed and then approved by the city council. However, Edison and his team work to make enough light bulbs, wire the district, and build two dynamos large enough to supply the required electricity and are just about ready a few hours before the deadline before another small detail, regulating the dynamos to work together, must be worked out. Of course, they succeeded in lighting a portion of New York, to the delight of everyone but Taggart. After a montage which lists Edison's other inventions and patents through the years, the story returns to "present day", 1929, on the golden (50 year) anniversary of light (the invention of the light bulb). The soft spoken aged Edison, at a banquet held in his honor, delivers a speech about the evolution of science, how it shouldn't be feared (as apparently it had) because if men can invent it, then they should be able to have the good enough sense to control it.
mark.waltz
Taking over the role of Thomas Alva Edison from his "Boy's Town" co-star Mickey Rooney in this follow-up to "Young Tom Edison", Spencer Tracy performed a George Arliss and Paul Muni like miracle of acting, turning into the famous inventor before your very eyes. This film (which can be seen without having seen its predecessor) deals with his arrival in New York City and his series of inventions from a recording device to the electric light, and a six month contract to get it up and running in New York or forever be shamed in scientific circles. Two character actors who supported Don Ameche's Alexander Graham Bell the previous year, are present. Charles Coburn plays the jovial General Powell who is Edison's biggest champion, while Gene Lockhart returns to his ruthless fool characterization as he becomes desperate to stop Edison from reaching his goal because of his financial involvement in the gaslights which previously (and dimly) lit up the streets.The film starts in 1929 when the aged Edison is being honored at the Jubilee of light, flashes back 60 years (although Tracy never appears to look to be in his early 20's), examines his courtship of young Rita Johnson (introduced thanks to a broken umbrella), his support by Coburn after fixing a broken stock market ticker tape machine, and eventual battle with the scheming Lockhart. Rather than expand into a third Edison tale, this film simply lists his other inventions after the electric light, which includes a reminder that he also had a hand in creating the kinescope, something we now know as motion pictures. A full length version of that discovery and the patent wars (which resulted in lawsuits by the real Edison himself) would have made an intriguing completion to the tale, but alas never came to fruition.This doesn't have the folksy atmosphere of "Young Tom Edison" (which is more family oriented in its narrative) yet is scientifically more important. Tracy really seems to become Edison, while Coburn, Lockhart and Grant Mitchell (as Lockhart's attorney) are excellent. The amount of comedy is somewhat limited, with a seemingly unnecessary inclusion of a young Tom Edison like inventor thrown in for a few later scenes. That doesn't diminish the value of this history lesson, given the MGM gloss and an important addition to the gallery of America's rise as an innovator in technology still in use today.
dwpollar
1st watched 9/11/2009 - 7 out of 10 (Dir- Clarence Brown): Wonderful chronicle of a maverick man and his inventions played by the always likable Spencer Tracy. The movie starts with the elderly Edison(with a nice set of makeup) being honored for his invention of the lightbulb, and then the story goes back to his early days before his first major invention. He was already twiddling with telegraph machines at this point, so we don't really get to see where his motivation came from -- just that he liked to do this. He is personally very ambitious from the beginning and knows that he has to have funds to do what he wants, so he stalks one of the richest men in town for his attention. He gets it after fixing one of his machines and he is hired and is given the space and time to create. He and his ragtag group start putting together quite a few accomplishments to the point where they have their own building and steady workforce. He's shown as having a good comraderie with his close knit fellows but has to let them go when things get rough. At least until the lightbulb is created, then things explode. I'm sure this story isn't 100% true when it comes to Edison as a person, but they do make good entertainment with it. Tracy also gives a good performance and is given a couple of nice speeches(that obviously come from the real Edison). Overall, this is light family entertainment, good for everyone, with an educational message. This doesn't happen often in the movies and MGM did well with this one as the usually did in this era.
