Gentleman's Agreement 1947

The Film:

I've seen this one before, quite a while back, as it's one of the films in my "Classic Hollywood" box set (along with How Green Was My Valley).

I remember quite liking it. I remember being quite shocked at how ridiculous the US attitude to American Jews was, especially so soon after a war we fought in order to protect their families (among other things). I'm slightly less naive about such things now, and so I'm keen to see the film again and form another opinion of it.

What I hadn't realised last time I watched it is that it features one of Hollywood's best child actors - Dean Stockwell, who I am far more familiar with as the much older character of Al from Quantum Leap. It also features actress June Havoc, who is better known (at least to Musicals fans) as Baby June, younger and blonder sister of Gypsy Rose Lee. I don't think I've seen her in anything else.

The Ceremony:

$6! Times have changed......

The ceremony took place at the Shrine Auditorium on March 20th 1948 (as you can see from the ticket!). It was hosted by Agnes Moorehead and Dick Powell - the first to have a female host!

The awards were spread around more than in most years, with no movie getting more than three Oscars. It is also (at time of writing) the most recent ceremony where all the acting nominees are now deceased.



Other Notable Winners That Night:

Edmund Gwenn, Loretta Young, Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm

The acting awards were shared between four different films this year - with each of the recipients winning their only Oscar.

Edmund Gwenn became the oldest Oscar winner at the time, at the age of 71 (he's since been overtaken!). In fact, all the winners except Celeste Holm had been making films for over thirty years by the time they won their award (Celeste had only been in the business for 2 or 3 years!)

Surely one of the weirdest Oscar winners was rewarded this year for "artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium". Now, I'm a big fan of Norman Barrett and his budgies (and once shared a bus ride with them) but this is something else:

Best Song:

Not Sidney Poitier

If you really want to be an Oscar geek/bore and get one over on others in true QI-style, then it's worth remembering the name James Baskett. He's best remembered for playing Uncle Remus in Song of the South and singing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, which won Best Song this year.

What people don't remember, however, is that he also won an Honorary Oscar for this role - making him (not Sidney Poitier!) the first African American man to win an acting Oscar.

So - unless the question is "Who was the first African American man to win a competitive acting Oscar?" then the answer is James Baskett. (I'm going to be extremely annoying one day with that one!)

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

The real Santa Claus?

There were some pretty strong films nominated this year - which makes it surprising that Gentleman's Agreement did so well.

I've not seen Crossfire (which is apparently the first B Movie to be nominated, and also has an anti-semitic theme). The other three are all really good films - The Bishop's Wife, Miracle on 34th Street and Great Expectations. The latter should probably have won it as being the better of the films, but I've got a soft spot for Miracle on 34th Street - with Maureen O'Hara using her real accent, and a very young Natalie Wood stealing the show from everyone (except perhaps Edmund Gwenn). It's miles better than the remake that gets repeated ad nauseum these days....



Our Verdict:

Oh boy! - a very young Dead Stockwell, already a few years
into his very long (and continuing) career.

Ditch the snob Phil - Celeste Holm is fabulous!

We've had a couple of years now of "issues" films - both of which were really impressive. This one doesn't stand up well to comparisons with its predecessors. I'm not sure why, but Gentleman's Agreement comes across as preachy and dated (surprising, as the message behind it is unfortunately as relevant as ever). I get the impression that Wilder and Wyler were, first and foremost, telling a good story about interesting people. Kazan seems to have forgotten about this - and is just trying to tell the story of anti-semitism. It's hard to care about an issue when you don't really care about the people that are dealing with it.

The premise is quite a good one - Phil Green is a widowed journalist who has moved to New York with his young son Tommy to live with his mother. He is asked to write a piece on anti-semitism in modern society and he decides (after thirty fairly unnecessary minutes of the film) to pretend to be Jewish and experience the prejudice for himself. In the length of time it takes him to find his "angle" he also manages to meet, fall in love with and get engaged to a well to do New Yorker called Kathy (who was so boring I had to look up the character's name again!). She's a rich, educated and liberal young woman who initially agrees wholeheartedly with Phil's idea - but her true colours start to show when she becomes embarrassed by what her friends and family might think of her "Jewish" fiance and - in one of her better scenes in the film - tells Tommy not to worry about being bullied because "it's not true", as he's not really Jewish.

A Gentile inn, for Gentile people

Phil also has a Jewish childhood friend who comes back from the army and has trouble finding an apartment. And a Jewish secretary who changed her name and hid her background to get work - but turns out to be bigoted in her own way, by seeing "us and them" within her own community.

I liked Phil's mother and son - they made up somewhat for his lack of warmth. And I liked his colleague, Anne, a lot. She was played by Celeste Holm (who I've always really liked!) who won the Supporting Oscar for the role. But I wasn't too fussed about anyone else. And Phil started to really annoy me by the end.

There are some good scenes - including the most famous, where Phil gets turned away from a restricted hotel. Boring Kathy makes a still very apt speech about privilege, and she just about redeems herself by the end, giving hope to all NIMBY liberals in 1940s New York.

Is a middle class war hero Jew different to any other Jew?

It's sad that, seventy years later, the same issues are still relevant in the US. The western world should have come a long way further than we have. My first thought was that there are different forms of racism going on today - but I think, rather, that there are just more forms of racism.

Gentleman's Agreement may have made a difference to people's thinking at the time - and hooray for that - but I'm afraid it left me rather cold this time round.

PS. Interestingly, in a film about prejudice and inequality, there were still unnamed black servers present in one or two scenes - we've been spotting them in pretty much every film since the start of this project. Gone With The Wind and Cimarron (both considered by some as a bit too racist for modern audiences) are the only films that gave them names and personalities! (And there's only Casablanca (iirc) that gives a black man a skilled profession and a mention in a famous quote!) Which makes me wonder - obviously there was still segregation in southern states, but in the more liberal north was Anti-Semitism considered a more significant problem to address than other forms of racism, or did 1930s/40s America just not see the inequality right in front of them?