Hollywood Fights Fascism

By Jacqueline T. Lynch

Past is prologue.  Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism...until now.  Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought.  

 

Classic films were the weapon. 

 

The Greatest Generation received instruction, inspiration, and, of course, entertainment from a source that affected them perhaps more than even the generations to follow, who grew up with greater technology: the movies.

 

The movies of the day tell us a lot about that generation, that first generation that fought fascism, what was expected of them, what they hoped to achieve, and how they saw themselves. It is not a perfect measuring stick, but the movies of the day show a passion for fighting fascism by everyday people that may shame their twenty-first century descendants.  Or at least, it should.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacqueline T. Lynch
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393321477

Jacqueline T. Lynch

Jacqueline T. Lynch has published articles and short fiction in regional and national publications, several plays, some award winners, one of which has been translated into Dutch and produced in the Netherlands.   Her several books, fiction and nonfiction, are available in eBook and print online.  She has recently published the first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth – Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.  She writes a syndicated newspaper column on classic films: Silver Screen, Golden Years, and also writes three blogs: Another Old Movie Blog (http://anotheroldmovieblog.blogspot.com)  A blog on classic films. New England Travels (http://newenglandtravels.blogspot.com)  A blog on historical and cultural sites in New England. Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. (http://annblythactresssingerstar.blogspot.com) website: www.JacquelineTLynch.com Etsy shop: LynchTwinsPublishing --  https://www.etsy.com/shop/LynchTwinsPublishing?ref=search_shop_redirect

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CONTENTS

Foreword

SECTION I: US VERSUS THEM: AMERICA’S REACTION TO FASCISM ABROAD

PART 1:  THEM

The War and the Movies—Ken Burn’s Documentary and

Our Collective Memory of World War II

The Mortal Storm (1940)

Address Unknown (1944)

Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Propaganda

Casablanca (1942) – Everybody Comes to Rick’s

Cry Havoc (1943)

Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944)

The Pied Piper (1942)

PART 2:  US—HOME FRONT PERSPECTIVES

Watch on the Rhine (1943) – For Each Man His Own Hands

The Ducktators (1942) and Peace on Earth (1939)

Hollywood Commandos (1997)

Bette Davis et al., at the Hollywood Canteen

Stage Door Canteen (1943) and Hollywood Canteen (1944)

This is the Army (1943)

Keep Your Powder Dry (1945)

So Proudly We Hail (1943)

On the Sunny Side (1942) and You, John Jones! (1943)

Since You Went Away (1944)

Happy Land (1943)

PART 3: THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

A Foreign Affair (1948)

The Big Lift (1950)

Edward R. Murrow Reports from Buchenwald (1945)

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

SECTION II:  FASCISM AT HOME

PART 1: THE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY

It Can’t Happen Here

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Meet John Doe (1941)

December 7th (1943)

Keeper of the Flame (1942)

Strange Holiday (1945)

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Storm Center (1956)

Storm Warning (1951)

A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Seven Days in May (1964)

The Post (2017), All the President’s Men (1976), and All the King’s Men (1949)

PART 2: BETRAYAL OF IDEALS

We Hold These Truths radio show, December 14, 1941

Hollywood Fights Back radio show, October 26th and November 2nd, 1947

Naïve Idealism

The House I Live In (1945)

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

One Third of a Nation (1939)

Trial (1955)

Lionel Barrymore—The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present

A Christmas Carol (1951) and Scrooge (1935)

Requiescat in Pace, Greatest Generation

Foreword: A Rendezvous with Destiny

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s remark in 1936 memorialized, even when they were still just teenagers, the generation that would later be called The Greatest Generation: There is a mysterious cycle in human events.  To some generations much is given.  Of other generations much is expected.  This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

There were many hurdles and many adventures in the lifespan of these individuals, including the Great Depression, wars, Cold War, and often bewildering changes in society that always seemed to come too quickly and followed by more.  The chief horror of the twentieth century, that century to which they were born and only a small number outlived, was fascism.

It attacked in many forms: in age-old prejudices, in government edicts, and often at the end of a gun barrel. Fomenting in Italy under dictator Benito Mussolini’s rule when they were still small children in the 1920s, fascism traveled to Germany and became fine-tuned and efficient under dictator Adolf Hitler when they were in their teens in the 1930s.

The war to fight fascism and the intended world domination of its promoters consumed the young adulthood of The Greatest Generation in the 1940s, and hundreds of thousands of them perished in the effort.

But winning the war by the Allies did not end fascism.  In the 1960s, our world became far more interested in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and communist states, and the space race, and the dizzying parade of social ills and revolutions.  But fascism remained, always there, like a smoldering ember at a campfire that has been carelessly left and will start a forest fire if the prevailing winds allow it. It has in recent years, under the administration of Donald Trump, become a flash fire.

The Greatest Generation received instruction, inspiration, and, of course, entertainment from a source that affected them perhaps more than even the generations to follow, who grew up with greater technology: the movies.

These essays are adapted from my Another Old Movie Blog, which strives to examine classic films in the context of the eras in which they were made. The films examined here were not the only ones to address in some form the subject of fascism; they reflect only what I have covered on my blog.  There are other movies that I hope to explore on my blog someday. The movies of the day tell us a lot about that generation, that first generation that fought fascism, what was expected of them, what they hoped to achieve, and how they saw themselves. It is not a perfect measuring stick, but the movies of the day show a passion for fighting fascism by everyday people that may shame their twenty-first century descendants.  Or at least, it should.

SECTION I: US VERSUS THEM: AMERICA’S REACTION TO FASCISM ABROAD

PART 1 – THEM

The War (2007) and The Movies

Ken Burn’s magnificent documentary miniseries, The War (2007) is as good a summary as we are likely to find on American involvement in World War II. However, I wonder if this production did not get quite the chatter that his excellent documentary on the Civil War received some thirty years previously. That film revived an interest for many non-Civil War buffs that had not been seen since the centennial commemorations of the early 1960s. Perhaps because it made the Civil War new to them. But when it comes to World War II, we may think we already know all about it. I wonder if this is because of the movies.

All the 1940s home front melodramas and battle depictions from soundstage war zones Hollywood fed to us and which have been left to succeeding generations on video and DVD, are fascinating souvenirs of an era. But that is all they are. They are not documentaries, only stories, and if younger people take them too seriously, or view them too romantically, or dismiss them as hokey and thereby dismiss the whole era, they may not know anything about Navajo Code Talkers, Japanese-American internment camps in several western states, segregated Japanese-American fighting units, or segregated Black fighting units. They may know about the fear and the anxiety and the consuming self-defensive patriotism of that era; and those are important things to know, because they are part of the American experience of World War II. But they are not the whole story.

A Christian Science Monitor article by Gloria Goodale from 2007 in which teenagers were interviewed upon viewing Mr. Burns’ The War remarked on how much they did not know about that era (which, not surprisingly, was considerable), and also indicated the teens’ rather blasé attitude about that era, particularly a remark made by one young man who insisted, We’re much more sophisticated these days.

In some ways, perhaps, especially technologically, but sophisticated does not necessarily mean mature. While the Baby Boomers have been called the Me Generation, the succeeding Gen Xers and Millennials have carried self-obsession and self-importance to an art form.  Gen Z is entering college and the workforce under COVID-19 restrictions.

It is disappointing that this moving and illuminating documentary on World War II should be dismissed by teens in 2007 as something as invalid and corny as an old Hollywood film. Perhaps Hollywood’s Technicolor way of sanitizing the struggle and making it sparkle like a song and dance number was a double-edged sword. It made the people of that era forget the anxiety for two hours and inspire them to go back out for more sacrifice and hardship. But those films can also slap a simplistic label on that era and make young people today disdainful and condescending of that era and those people who lived it.

I have never understood film critics’ common remark that an old film does not hold up today. The films made back then were not intended to hold up through the ages. They were directed towards the audience of the day, and were never expected to be scrutinized on video and DVD generations later. Most of the classics of literature, though they may be revered, would never be published today, either. They do not hold up. Yet, we do not question the importance of classic literature in our culture. Quite possibly, eighty years from now today’s popular novels will cause some bewilderment and even disdain to future generations. Tattoos and piercings are going to get huge laughs. We should not be too stingy with our empathy. We’re going to need it ourselves someday.

World War II is too large a story to be capsulized in one effort, even by the talented Ken Burns, which he himself acknowledges. It is rather more like a mosaic, a vast jigsaw puzzle. Old Hollywood films are an important part of the puzzle, as are radio programs, newspaper accounts, newsreels, the documentaries of Frank Capra, phonograph records, diaries, and letters home. It was a war well documented. But that doesn’t mean we know all about it. With all that documentation, we were still missing a piece, and that is what Ken Burns has supplied. Though his trademark scanning across the faces in a photograph gives us a feeling of intimacy with the subject, it is this very voice from the distance of eighty years, this ripening of memory, this fermenting of emotions by those involved, which can only take place after a very long time, that gives us the viewpoint we were missing.

It is a perspective of objectivity. Burns’ narration does not get emotional; he leaves that to the elderly interviewees. However, though objective, the film is still empathetic.

To be empathetic, one must sometimes accept what one cannot understand. Burns’ successful Civil War documentary enlightened the viewer on a world of slavery and of slaughter. To connect with that documentary, one must accept that slavery was a common way of life to a particular segment of our Southern land-owning population, a way of life that could only lead the country to war. One must accept that Americans in both the Union and Confederate armies were passionate about sacrificing their lives for their beliefs and for the hopes of the future, willingly losing thousands of lives in single battles, battle after battle. One cannot begin to understand the American Civil War without accepting that they felt compelled to do this. If one dismisses it with disdain or condescension, one learns nothing.

One cannot begin to understand America’s involvement in World War II without knowing about the savagery of battles kept from the public at home, without accepting the self-defensive patriotism, the racism, the naïveté of self-sacrifice, a Loose Lips May Sink Ships poster, a cornball chorus of In Der Fuehrer’s Face. If one dismisses it, any of it, as lacking in sophistication, one learns nothing.

The Mortal Storm (1940)

The Mortal Storm (1940) is about fascism.  It is about young love—and fascism.  It is about family values—and fascism.  It is about career dreams—and fascism.  We may consider these ideals to be separate from fascism, even opposing, but they are not.  So many people in the course of history have woven them together at their own peril.

Fascism flavored the 2016 Republican Party convention and Donald Trump’s rise in the media as a candidate for President.  He is unapologetically a fascist; his remarks, his policies, his actions never suggested anything else.  His very arrogance was the jackboot.  His followers understood that better than his detractors, and they approved. Too many people perhaps equate the word fascism with something old-fashioned, belonging to the twentieth century, and think it is a foreign aberration, since Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler made it a slogan and source of power.  They might think that the word today is cliché and overused, but it is as powerful and meaningful a word and a strain of political thought today as it ever was from the 1920s through the 1940s.  It is with us still, and the most poisonous aspect of fascism is it becomes chameleon-like.  We do not see it for what it is, unless we force ourselves to concentrate and look at the ugliness and our responsibility for it.

Classic films during World War II forced us to look at fascism.  Of course, the films were patriotic and even propagandist, and it was very easy to pick out the villains in the movies because they were wearing Nazi uniforms.  But in that strange, tense era just before our involvement in World War II, the studios utilized their art and their industry with courage not seen today; and with a social conscience not seen today, they examined fascism.

Because of so many screen Nazi bad guys, we may have come to believe that fascism is a product of Europe, and is as out of sync with the modern world as high-waisted trousers, fedoras, and candlestick telephones. The movies I’m going to examine will take us out of that notion, and into an interesting exercise in which we must look to examine how fascism starts, how it spreads, and what do we do about it.

The Mortal Storm was produced by M-G-M with great trepidation.  We were not at war with Germany yet (indeed, we would not go to war with Germany until two days after they already declared war on us in December 1941), and the studio was wary about producing a movie that could be considered inflammatory.  The German film market was especially important to Hollywood, and offending the German government could be disastrous when it came to distribution of the film in Europe.  Moreover, the studio heads were sensitive about pushing the subject of fascism when, as most of them were of Jewish heritage, they were afraid to appear as if they were politicizing their product.  It had been their practice, as most of them were European immigrants to this country, to assimilate to their new country and to adapt to its culture, its language, and even, if necessary, to concede to its long-standing prejudices.  Indeed, Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), which will be examined in a later chapter, was avoided by many studios and was finally produced by Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox—a major studio head who did not happen to be Jewish, but who had guts (until he reluctantly capitulated during the Blacklist), and took on the story.

We may applaud M-G-M for moving forward with The Mortal Storm, risks and all, but their fears were justified.  The German government under Adolf Hitler was incensed that this film was made, and banned it and any future M-G-M movie from being shown in Germany.  That M-G-M was blacklisted by the Nazis may have been worn as a badge of courage by the studio in future years when the war was going on, but at the time it was seen as a misfortune.

However, the film is quite mild by today’s standards, at least in depicting the savagery of Hitler’s regime.  It is still a powerful movie, and that is because it deals with people.  Ideals, and political jargon are bandied about, of course, and people take sides, but first and foremost it is a movie about a single family and what happens to them when forces beyond their control knock on their door and take over their lives.  The story is gentle, and it is scary.

Frank Morgan plays a university professor in Germany.  The year is 1933.  Irene Rich is his wife.  Her two grown sons by a previous marriage are played by Robert Stack and William T. Orr. They are very close to their stepfather, and when the film opens with Morgan’s sixtieth birthday celebration, they take him aside to give him their present personally and to thank him for being such a wonderful father to them.

From Mr. Morgan’s marriage to Irene Rich there are also two younger children, a daughter played by Margaret Sullavan, and a son barely in his teens played by Gene Reynolds.  At the university where Mr. Morgan teaches, a surprise celebration in his lecture hall greets him when his students and the other members of the faculty, who clearly respect him and love him very much, present him with a gift and sing Gaudeamus Igitur in his tribute (which is pretty impressive watching the cast sing it in Latin).  We’ve heard the song in zillions of old movies and cartoons whenever a scene is set at a college. It’s like playing California, Here I Come, or The Sidewalks of New York when a scene is set in those places.

Two of those students are played by Robert Young and James Stewart.  Mr. Young, Mr. Stewart, and Miss Sullavan have been friends since childhood.  When these two gentlemen come home with the family to share a birthday dinner for Mr. Morgan, we see that Robert Young is even closer to Margaret Sullavan, and impetuously asks her to marry him.  With his exuberance, and the whole family watching, he makes it difficult for her to say no and she accepts.  Everyone in the family is jubilant, except for James Stewart, whose expression ever so slightly falls and we see that he has harbored an unspoken affection for Margaret.

But the birthday party turns on its head when we hear from the radio that Adolf Hitler has just been elected Chancellor of Germany.

Fascism, in its most vile form, is brought to a nation in a democratic election.  There is nothing so virulent a germ as a political movement which serves to appeal to the most base, crude, and ignorant in a society, inflating them with a power they do not have, and then later taking it away like a shell game. Alexis de Tocqueville, nineteenth century historian who made many keen and valuable observations on America in its formative years noted especially of our eagerness to follow the mob, despite our boasts of individual freedom:

In times of equality, no matter what political laws men devise for themselves, it is safe to foresee that trust in common opinion will become a sort of religion, with the majority as the prophet.

Robert Young, Robert Stack, and William T. Orr are overjoyed at the radio announcement and celebrate, saying that Hitler will bring the country back to greatness.  He will make Germany great again.

James Stewart has no political convictions; he still seems to be reeling at the idea that Margaret Sullavan is going to marry somebody else.  Frank Morgan and his wife are hesitant to be quite as jubilant as the boys. They hope for the best, but as a university professor, Morgan is unimpressed with Hitler’s designs on the country and his methods for achieving greatness.  Morgan is a man devoted to logic, and this is all too illogical for him.

But there is more to his concern.  We come to find out later in the film that Frank Morgan is Jewish.

In the movie, his Jewish heritage is never mentioned by name, he is instead called non-Aryan, and at first, we may think this is M-G-M pulling a punch, trying not to get too ethnic, too personal, too political.  It probably was. But time tends to leave a patina, on ideas as well as on objects, and I think perhaps that non-Aryan sounds here more inclusive of all the millions of people who suffered under Hitler’s regime.  

When people who deny the Holocaust, or just as perverse, people who do not deny it, but who simply prefer not to think about it, hear the figure of six million Jews being murdered, I wonder if they forget that also there were at least nine million non-Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union murdered in death camps, and nearly two million non-Jewish Poles, and millions of other people whom the Hitler regime regarded as non-entities: Roma (referred to at the time as Gypsies), non-Jewish Czechs, Serbs and other peoples of occupied Europe, and people within Germany who protested, including Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the infirm, the mentally challenged, convicts, and homosexuals—a variety of targets in addition to the millions of suffering Jews.

It is staggering.  And because it is staggering, the human mind recoils, unless the heart is brave and the mind has a bigger conscience than it has a fear of discomfort.  Only a moron and a coward would deny the Holocaust, and though we may equate the Holocaust with fascism, we must remember that fascism did not start there.

Non-Aryan, means everybody who was not considered to be us.  And fascism resulted in millions of thems.  Us and them.  That’s where it always starts.

The movie moves swiftly from this point, with Robert Young, Robert Stack and William T. Orr becoming more immersed in the Nazi culture, wearing uniforms, giving the Nazi salute, and their boyish jubilation has turned to stern, dogmatic, and slavish obedience to their new leader. (Look for a young Dan Dailey as an especially vicious Nazi youth leader.)  Hitler has given them an identity, and they draw apart from their family because of it.  They become distant with Frank Morgan, and Robert Young’s preoccupation with his new Nazi youth organization duties has left Margaret Sullavan alone and puzzled at the change in him.

James Stewart, who has come to the university to learn veterinary medicine, has grown up on a farm on the outskirts of town.  His mother is classic film fan favorite Maria Ouspenskaya.  Young Bonita Granville is their hired girl, and Bonita has a crush on James Stewart.  Before the movie is over, she will be terrorized by Nazi thugs trying to get information out of her about where James Stewart is hiding.

Stewart has pulled away from his university pals; he wants none of this Nazi business.  When he sees them beating up an old teacher, James Stewart runs to his aid, and Margaret Sullavan helps. She refuses to stop seeing Stewart as friends, even though Robert Young warns her to stay away from him, not so much because of romantic jealousy, but because Stewart is getting a name for himself as an enemy of the state.  It does not take much to be an enemy of the state.  James Stewart has made no political speeches; he assiduously avoids talk of politics at every turn; he just wants to be left alone.  But he will not join the boys in their Nazi youth organization, and this makes the boys furious.  He will not play with them, so now Stewart has stopped being us, and has become them.

Frank Morgan, formerly beloved by one and all, has become an even more serious them.  He is not political either, but he was born to be a them, because he is a non-Aryan.  He is sent to a concentration camp.

James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan show the most courage and the most moxie of anyone in the movie because of their stubborn refusal to be one of the gang, because they defend a victim of that gang, and because Miss Sullavan openly claims her heritage.  When she hears Robert Young disparage non-Aryans, she calls them my people, though her mother most certainly is Aryan and if she wanted to, Margaret Sullavan could be safe even in this Nazi regime by denying her father and ignoring her Jewish heritage. She breaks off with Robert Young.

An exciting climax builds when, after Frank Morgan dies in the concentration camp (which must have been at least surprising, if not shocking, to audiences of the day), she, her mother, and her young brother try to escape from Germany as James Stewart has already done before them.  Mother and younger brother make it, but Margaret is held at the border.  Stewart comes back for her and leads her through a treacherous mountain pass, with Robert Young and the boys on the chase. Just as Stewart and Sullavan are skiing down a wintry slope approaching the Austrian border, the patrol under the orders of Robert Young, shoots Margaret Sullavan down like a dog.

Mr. Stewart scoops her up in his arms and continues to ski for the border, but she dies before he can reach it.

That had to be strong stuff for the audiences of the day.  The Nazis here are not punished, they are not foiled.  World War II, begun in September 1939, is barely six months old, and it would be another year and a half before we became involved.  This is a tragedy we cannot reach.  Is it any of our business?  Some Americans on the sidelines (and in the movie theaters) said yes, some said no, some were cheering for the Nazis and resented them being presented as the bad guys.

Robert Young has always impressed me with his sensitive acting ability. I think I like him better in dramas than in comedies, though he could certainly do both well.  Here he is not so much a brainwashed Nazi, as someone who is trying to convince himself that he hasn’t made a mistake, and his pride is too great to admit that he could be wrong. 

We see this so often today.  People so slavishly devoted to an idea, or political party, or a candidate, who refuse to entertain any niggling doubt that might indicate they are wrong in their choice, that there are holes in the story they want to believe.

Robert Young does still love Margaret Sullavan, and we can see he is choked up and appalled by her murder (he even helped her earlier by finding out what camp her father was taken to), but we do not know if this is going to change him and make him step back from being a Nazi.  It probably won’t.  He would have to admit he was wrong.

Robert Stack is also appalled by his half-sister’s murder, and he is the most sensitive to the horror of it.  It’s possible he would step back from being a Nazi if he could, but he is too weak.  It is not his pride that keeps him in the grip of fascism; it is his weakness.

The younger brother, William T. Orr, is the one most flagrantly dogmatic about fascism, to the point where he does not mourn his sister’s murder.  He slaps Robert Stack in the face for entertaining thoughts that they have made a mistake.  Orr has embraced fascism out of lack of maturity, a lack of intelligence, and because of the sensational high it gives him; he is perfect fodder for the new regime.

Frank Morgan, before he is taken to the death camp, refuses to submit to Nazis, not because he is a non-Aryan, but because he is a teacher and a scientist, and in both professions, truthfulness is more important than fad, or should be.  He takes umbrage about the concept of racial purity in his lecture hall as students protest when he insists that the blood of different races is the same.

Scientific truth is scientific truth, unchangeable and eternal.  It cannot be altered to suit the politics of the hour or the clamor of immature hoodlums.

Later he will say, I’ve never prized safety for my children, I’ve prized courage.

These are great lines.  They are just as apropos today. I mentioned Donald Trump as both an aberration of our time and a consequence of it in a post I wrote in early 2016, part of the later chapter on Naïve Idealism.  I admit, I did not think then he would ever be elected, that the media would have raised him to the level of a celebrity; or that the party of Abraham Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, of Dwight D. Eisenhower would have embraced this pig.  But fascism has its mysterious and confounding allure.  We cannot depend on modern films to tackle the subject.  They are too busy with juvenile stories.  Luckily, we have classic films.

Address Unknown (1944)

Address Unknown (1944) is a very artistic examination of the consequences of fascism. The cinematography creates an otherworldly palette of light and shadow, of angles, of unbalanced screen images that is poetic and visionary. Classic films took on the subject of fascism and planted the nightmare on an everyday familiar world with everyday people we could relate to, unlike modern films which might tackle the grand subject of good versus evil and place it in an imaginary futuristic or superhero setting. The characters in classic films were unable to escape their circumstances with special powers or an arsenal of apocalyptic weaponry. They had only their brains, their courage, and their conscience.

With Donald Trump’s Faustian rise to become the official nominee of a major political party and then becoming President, enjoying the slavish protection of the Republican Party no matter what inappropriate or criminal actions he took, the subject of fascism is one we need to examine very closely, not as a history lesson per se, viewed safely from a distance, but as a very personal blueprint on how to fight it in our midst—with brains, courage, and conscience.

Address Unknown came late in the war, and so was not so much a warning of the consequences of what was going on in Nazi Germany – though certainly, Hollywood likely felt the subject still worth pursuing morally and financially. The interesting thing about the movie is it shows very little of jackbooted Nazis, the sneering villains of most wartime patriotic fare. It is instead a psychological nightmare of one man’s seduction and the price he pays for going over to the dark side. As such, it is not a flag-waving, drum-beating story, but a mature, contemplative tale that, unfortunately, as we see today, is timeless.

Paul Lukas stars as a German-born art dealer who has lived in San Francisco for many years. He is married to Mady Christians, and they have five sons. Four of the boys are school-age, the oldest, played by Peter van Eyck, is a young man and works in the art gallery with his father.

Morris Carnovsky plays his longtime partner in the gallery, also originally from Germany. Mr. Carnovsky is a widower with a grown daughter played by K.T. Stevens. Stevens and Peter van Eyck have known each other since childhood, are romantically involved and intend to be married.

The story begins with the partners toasting each other on a sunny terrace in San Francisco, grateful for their life in America, and secretly celebrating because they think that Lukas’ son and Carnovsky’s daughter are about to name the day of their wedding. These old friends look forward to having their families united. It