Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 by Doherty Thomas

Author:Doherty, Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film & Video/History & Criticism, HIS036060, History/United States/20th Century
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Weimar set melodrama I: confronting a clueless home front, a combat veteran (Andy Devine) is forced to surrender his water pistol to his former high school instructor (Al Sheen) in The Road Back (1937), James Whale’s version of the novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

Another big-screen version of a well-regarded Remarque novel caused far less of a stir, perhaps because its concern with the backfire from the Great War was subordinate to its wallowing in the passions from a romantic triangle, or quadrangle. Written in 1936, by which time Remarque was in exile, and published in English in 1937, Three Comrades was another psycho-political drama of the residue from the Great War, but the addition of a beautiful girl into the mix put the Hollywood rendering on firmer footing. While the novel was still in galleys, MGM won a fierce bidding war for the film rights only to have second thoughts as it monitored the decline of Universal’s The Road Back. “Three Comrades has political production problems fully as critical, from the showman’s angle, as had The Road Back,” observed Daily Variety, by which it meant that overt political reverberations were as problematic for American audiences as for German diplomats.35 Even so, chastened by his reprimand over The Road Back, Gyssling kept mum about the Hollywood version of the subsequent Remarque novel.

Directed by Frank Borzage, Three Comrades (1938) is a gauzy period piece, set in Germany after the Armistice but before the uprising of the Nazi Party in Munich in 1923. Like so many interwar flashbacks, it opens precisely on November 11, 1918, Armistice Day, the date scrawled in vapor trails in a skyline establishing shot. In a smoky rathskeller, weary but blissful survivors are toasting the end of the war, raising their glasses to fallen comrades on all sides. The three titular friends—big brotherly Otto (Franchot Tone), idealistic firebrand Gottfried (Robert Young), and strong silent type Erich (matinee idol Robert Taylor) pledge lifelong fidelity on the strength of a bond forged in the crucible of combat. Expert airplane mechanics, they retool for civilian life by opening an automobile repair shop to eke out a living in an economically crippled, spiritually traumatized nation.

One day, taking their beloved souped-up convertible “Baby” out for a cruise in the countryside, a horn-blowing road hog tries to outrace them. The speed demons easily beat out the overweight, arrogant businessman behind the wheel, but his fetching passenger Patricia (a radiant Margaret Sullavan) stops them cold. Defying expectations, the entry of the girl does not break up the male triad, but solidifies it: Otto and Gottfried guide the romantically maladroit Erich through his courtship and protectively embrace Patricia as a sister. Throughout, the usual Code-mandated obscurity falls over the Remarque clarity: Gottfried is an idealist (read: communist) while Patricia’s friend (read: sugar daddy) is a Nazi-in-waiting.

In the background of the romantic harmony, the social wreckage of postwar Germany creates a powder keg just waiting for someone to strike the match. Wounded veterans mark time in cafes, roving bands of angry men prowl the streets, and the precious “Baby” is vandalized by thugs.

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