ironhorse_iv It was a bit surprising to find out that Henry Bellamann's 1940 novel, 'King Row' was even able to be made during the restrictions of the Hays Production Code because of the disturbing topics dealt in the source material. The book dealt with really controversy topics such as incestuous relationship, mercy killing, homosexuality, and others. Sadly, most of the book topics were chop from the film due to being too gruesome or depressing. While the 1942 film from Warner Brothers is a sanitized version of Henry Bellamann's 1940 novel, it's still have that conflict that made it watchable. Directed by Sam Wood, the film tells a story of Paris Mitchell (Robert Cumming) growing up in a small American town call Kings Row during the turn of the century of the 20th century. While, Robert Cumming doesn't have the acting chops like others, he was alright in the role, despite what other critics might say about him. Parris is a medical student studying under Dr. Tower's (Claude Rains) psychiatry tutoring. Claude Rains as always is great in this role. Soon enough, Paris starts to see that something was unsettling between the relationship between Cassandra Towers (Betty Field) and her father. Betty Field's performance does make it feel as though she's holding something back, but still kinda over the top. Parris soon falls in love with her, but since Dr. Tower is against the relationship. Both teens are forced to keep the love affair, a secret, which lead to tragic results and her death. Feeling as if it was his fault, Parris flees to Vienna for medical school, only to come back and try to save his best friend, Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan) from a similar fate. Without spoiling too much of the film, the film still dealt with strong themes such as insanity, homicide, suicide, euthanasia, amputation, malpractice, and embezzlement. If there is one thing good from the Production Code era, is how wise the filmmakers had to be, to show banned topics through the use of metaphor. Example of this in the movie is how the buggy rides by Drake representing sex. The movie also use the railroad tracks as physical dividing line between the poor representing by the Gordon family and the rich representing the Powers. Each comprised of a doctor, his wife and their only daughter. The film narrative become even more complex with this theme when the originally a poor man, Parris and a rich man, Drake exchange social classes throughout the film. There is a theme with both of the doctors presume to play God: to decide the fates of other people, even to the extent of who should live and who should die. But the film goes even further: when Parris returns to Kings Row as the new doctor, he almost have to be in the same way. The movie does somewhat become, Ronald Reagan's movie, half way in the film since Parris goes off to study psychiatry in Vienna as Drake's life really takes a dive. Ronald Reagan is amazing. "Where's the rest of me," scene was really sad. I'm glad, they took the cancer scene from the novel out of the film. It would be way too much. Charles Coburn as Dr. Gordon was menacing with his sadistic operations. Most of the supporting cast was pretty good. The female leads, Louise Gordon (Nancy Coleman) and Randy Monaghan (Ann Sheridan) were alright. Odd for an actress to get top billing for only being in the middle of the film do we get to see Randy. Kaaren Verne shows up near the tail end of Kings Row as Elise. She doesn't do much. I felt her character would had been written off. The acclaimed score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold seem a bit odd, but beautiful. Erich Wolfgang Korngold mistook the title for a fantasy medieval movie, and wrote the score like that. When he kinda heard of what the movie was going to be about, he didn't change it, and kept the original song. The song became really popular over the years as it was requested by the White House for the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. Even Prolific film scorer John Williams drew inspiration from this film's soundtrack for his famous 1977's Star Wars opening theme. James Wong Howe's Black-and-White Cinematography is great. Don't watch the colorized version as it looks cheap. I love how Howe shot the scenes of Vienna. The production was cut down due to World War 2, but it was workable. There were some bad editing cuts and place where dialogue seem out of place. The entire ending seem a bit rushed and sloppy. Kings Row has been adapted for a seven episodes television series in 1955 with worst results. If remade in the modern sense, I hope the formerly censor sensitive topics would be shown with more character development, so it can be a more compelling story. Overall: It's a great melodramas of triumph, defeat and protest. That teach people of the ways of the world, and how to be acceptance on whatever life gives you.

deschreiber Although this is a real melodrama, with its share of implausibilities--Parris is such a good-y-goody, Randy is too tailored, coiffed and well-scrubbed to be living in hardscrabble poverty--I enjoyed this movie for its mystery and complex plot.It left me wondering about sex among unmarried couples in those days. Didn't anybody worry about becoming pregnant? When Parris and Cassie turn out the light, with Parris later showing up at Drake's place so nobody will know where he's been, we're shown clearly that Parris and Cassie have been making love. Drake's buggy rides into the country with the two "loose" sisters hint at extramarital sex. And it is clear that Randy and Drake's rides into the country include some spendour in the grass; once when she suggests they stop and get out to walk, he jumps down from the buggy like an eager puppy, which prompts her to say something along the lines of, "No, I mean really go for a walk. I know what you had in mind." One thing that seems odd is the fact that Randy gives in so quickly and easily to Drake's advances right on their first outing, while afterwards she is portrayed as such an upstanding woman, such a pillar of virtue, rather than a tramp. Another time she tells him she won't marry him, but she is perfectly willing to continue on with their current arrangement, which appears to be mostly physical. It puzzles me that, given their time and their society, they aren't roundly condemned by everyone, including Randy's family which, to the contrary, seem completely comfortable with her having an openly physical relationship with Drake. It all seems a little jarring, given, as I say, the time and place.I thought Ronald Reagan's performance in the early section, when he was devil-may-care, was quite weak. I always had the sense while watching him of an actor acting and saying lines. However, later, after Drake's fall, when he became serious, I thought Reagan's performance was far more believable, even good (which is saying a lot for Reagan). It left me with the impression that maybe the more serious performance was closer to the real man, Ronald Reagan (although it is possible that the problem was with the script as much as with the performance). In any case, I was left thinking that the figure we all saw on television, the avuncular president, equable, grinning, sure of himself in every thought and action, utterly free of doubt, was just one of Reagan's performances, a character he was playing for the camera. The real Reagan, I thought, was probably more like Drake in the later part of this movie, serious, conflicted, subject to doubt and depression, fully human. It makes sense, doesn't it--Reagan wanting to give faith and confidence to his nation by PLAYING a president giving faith and confidence to his nation.

bkoganbing Besides providing Ronald Reagan with his career role and the title of his pre-presidential autobiography, Kings Row is a finely crafted piece of film making by director Sam Wood. The film got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best black and white Cinematography for James Wong Howe.Incredibly though, the rich musical score that Erich Wolfgang Korngold did was overlooked by the Academy. That's the thing you will take away from watching the film, even more so than Ronald Reagan's anguished cry of 'where's the rest of me'.The story takes place at the turn of the last century with an interlude of ten years from 1890 to 1900 where we see the leads as children first and then as adults. Despite Ronald Reagan getting all the notice here, he's actually third billed in the cast. Above him are Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings and it's really the Cummings character whom the film is centered around.King's Row is the town these folks inhabit, purportedly based on Fulton Missouri, the hometown of author Henry Bellamann. This may be set in Missouri, but don't expect no Tom Sawyer like story. If in fact the novel is based on Bellamann's experiences growing up, he must have had one Gothic childhood.Sam Wood assembled an incredible cast of supporting players, like Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn, Harry Davenport, Minor Watson, Nancy Coleman, and Kaaren Verne. Coburn and Anderson are the parents of Coleman and they don't like the fact she's keeping company with Reagan who's playing the entire Kings Row field. In addition Coburn is a doctor who is also a sadist, he does things like perform operations without use of anesthetic. I'm sure he had heard of Dr. Morton and his successful use of ether by this time.The best in the cast though is Claude Rains, something he usually was in a lot of films. He's another doctor, totally different from Coburn. He's a famous medical practitioner who has chosen to hide himself away in this small and obscure town. He's got a wife who never comes out and a daughter who grows up to be Betty Field who is suddenly and abruptly taken out of school as a child. It's with him who Robert Cummings studies medicine with to pass the examination and go to school in Europe to become a doctor.Rains's tragic story is what sets in motion the rest of the story that climaxes with Reagan's anguished cry. Rains creates such a mysterious and sad air about him that you think about him more than anyone else in the movie. Kings Row begs comparison to Our Town which is partly set in the generation where the Cummings, Field, Reagan, and Sheridan characters all grow up. Grover's Corners has its share of tragedies as well as happy times.Kings Row and Our Town should be run back to back in order to see what I'm referring to. It's not a bad double bill, in fact quite a literate one.

Jem Odewahn I just watched this excellent melodrama two nights and was very impressed with it all round. Superb acting, gripping plot, and a memorable Korngald score.It reminds me heavily of Peyton Place, with the idyllic town hiding an dark underbelly of secrets. I understand that much of the original novel had to be watered down due to the Code, but the film still manages to touch in many subjects virtually taboo in the 40's. Pre-marital sex (the tortured Cassie and Parris' embrace and fade out to Korngald's score and the lashing storm), medical sadism, madness. The book apparently also touches on father-daughter incest.I guess this is Parris Mitchell's story, and his coming-of-age, but it could also be Drake McHugh's story. In a way, Drake is more sympathetic than Parris. Parris is almost unbelievably good, while we can relate more to Drake.We have three doctors in this tale, who all (at least to me) make the crucial mistake of mixing personal feelings with medical practice. Parris is the only one who overcomes this.I find it interesting that Warners cast three actors virtually untested in dramatic films for the three central roles in this major release. Ronald Reagan is especially good in what would have to be his best film performance. He never came close to matching his work here again. His work here was ceryainly worthy of an Oscar nomination. Cummings is an actor I have grown to like more every time I see him in something new-- he was capable of strong dramatic work in this, and films like "Black Book" and "The Lost Moment". But it is Ann Sheridan who holds the film together in the second half.But the whole cast is impressive. Charles Coburn, usually lovable, is truly frightening as the sadistic doctor. Judith Anderson normally leaves the audience trembling in her eerie wake, but here she is effectively silenced by her monstrous husband. Nancy Coleman and Betty Field both give affecting, disturbing portrayals of daughters driven mad by dominance and repression. Maria Ouspenskaya is touching as Parris' beloved grandmother. Claude Rains is mysterious. And Kareen Verne is refreshing as Parris' eventual love.Sam Wood, a very competent director, leads us through this nostalgic tale with flair. A wonderful film, 10/10.