FILMS MAIN

The Films of Julie London

1947 to 1949

The Red House       Tap Roots      Task Force

The Red House

1947. United Artists. 100 mins. Available on VHS and DVD.

Sol Lesser - Producer

Delmer Daves - Screenwriter, Director
Merrill White - Editor

Bert Glennon - Cinematographer
George Agnew Chamberlain - Book Author

Miklos Rozsa - Score
McClure Capps - Art Director

Frank Beetson, Jr. - Costume Designer

Cast:

Edward G. Robinson - Pete Morgan
Lon McCallister - Nath Storm
Judith Anderson - Ellen Morgan
Allene Roberts - Meg Morgan
Julie London - Tibby
Rory Calhoun - Teller
Harry Shannon - Dr. Byrne
Arthur Space - The Sheriff
Walter Sande - Don Brent
Ona Munson - Mrs. Storm
Pat Flaherty - Cop

PLOT: Delmer Daves directs the noirish thriller The Red House, based on the novel by George Agnew Chamberlain. Edward G. Robinson plays Pete Morgan, a farmer who harbors dark secrets and refuses to let anyone near the red house in the woods behind the house. In order to fend off trespassers, he hires Teller (Rory Calhoun) to stand guard. He lives with his sister, Ellen (Judith Anderson), and his adopted daughter, Meg (Allene Roberts). When they hire Meg's friend, Nath Storm (Lon McCallister), to help out on the farm, the two kids start to wonder about the mysterious red house. The film features an eerie original score by Miklós Rózsa. Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

New York Times review by A.W.  (March 17, 1947)
It's been a long time since the Hollywood artisans have turned out an adult horror number. "The Red House," which arrived at the Globe on Saturday, is just such an edifying offering, which should supply horror-hungry audiences with the chills of the month. For this tenebrous tale of an abandoned house set deep in a tangled and forbidding forest and its impact on the lives of a group of people living close by, is told intelligently and with mounting tension. If rationalization should reveal the house's secret long before the denouement, or much talk level rising gooseflesh now and again, the picture's cumulative effect still is as eerie as a well-spun ghost story.

A newcomer to this film genre, Delmer Daves, the director, who also wrote the screen play, has followed the blueprint laid down by George Agnew Chamberlain's novel. The somber and brooding mood is set as the camera, swinging over a sylvan scene, comes to rest on "Ox-head woods, which have the allure of a walled castle." When teen-aged Nath Storm comes to help with the chores on the adjacent Pete Morgan farm, both he and Meg, Pete's adopted daughter, are warned away from "Ox-head—the red house—and screams in the night" by the dour and suddenly aroused farmer. And it is through these naturally inquisitive youngsters that the mystery is slowly and suspensefully unfolded, a story involving a couple of fifteen-year-old murders and their dire hold on Pete Morgan, his spinster sister and Meg.

Edward G. Robinson is excellent as crippled Pete, whose mind is cracking under the thrall of the horrible secret of the red house, and Judith Anderson gives a taut performance as his sister who has silently shared his mental burden. They, as well as Lon McCallister, who is fine as the sensitive and courageous Nath, are supported by a pair of newcomers whose portrayals are seasoned far beyond their records. Include in this category Allene Roberts as Meg, the troubled daughter who is torn between her affection for her foster father and the strange "allure" of the red house, and Julie London, as Nath's girl friend, a curvaceous flirt who employs her obvious charms competently. Rory Calhoun, as a handsome and unlettered woodsman, and Ona Munson round out the uniformly good cast.

Delmer Daves' fluid direction and an appropriately macabre musical assist from Miklos Rozsa, has done nothing to detract from their characterizations.

Tap Roots

1948. Universal-International. 109 mins.  Available on DVD.

Walter Wanger - Producer

George Marshall - Director

Winton Hoch, Lionel Lindon - Cinematographers

Alan LeMay, Lionel Wiggam - Screenwriters

James Street - Book Author
Frank Skinner - Score

Frank Richards - Art Director
Yvonne Wood - Costume Designer

Cast:
Van Heflin - Keith Alexander
Susan Hayward - Morna Dabney
Boris Karloff - Tishomingo
Julie London - Aven Dabney
Whitfield Connor - Clay MacIvor
Ward Bond - Hoab Dabney
Richard Long - Bruce Dabney
Arthur Shields - Rev. Kirkland
Griff Barnett - Dr. MacIntosh
Ruby Dandridge - Dabby
Russell Simpson - Sam Dabney

PLOT: Set at the beginning of the Civil War, Tap Roots is all about a county in Mississippi which chooses to secede from the state rather than enter the conflict. The county is protected from the Confederacy by an abolitionist (Ward Bond) and a Native American gentleman (Boris Karloff). The abolitionist's daughter (Susan Hayward) is courted by a powerful newspaper publisher (Van Heflin) when her fiance (Whitfield Connor), a confederate officer, elopes with the girl's sister (Julie London). The daughter at first resists the publisher's attentions, but turns to him for aid when her ex-fiance plans to capture the seceding county on behalf of the South. A pocket-edition Gone With the Wind, Tap Roots is way too ambitious for its smallish budget. Modern viewers can have fun spotting such anachronisms as the Southern troops' use of dynamite--several years before it was invented. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

New York Times review by T.M.P. (August 26, 1948)

Checking the accuracy of historical detail in "Tap Roots," the romanticized Civil War drama which Walter Wanger and Universal-International presented yesterday at Loew's Criterion, would serve no special purpose. All that matters is that in this mass of Technicolor film Van Heflin makes violent love to Susan Hayward (and vice versa) and men die gaudily and resentfully for a cause doomed from the start. It might be remarked in passing that the picture also dies a slow, lingering death.

History tells us that the Confederate Army had to divert some of its troops to put down a rebellious community in Mississippi which declared itself neutral and independent of state rule. That much of "Tap Roots" can be justified, but the manner in which the incident has been embellished for dramatic purposes is something else again. Mr. Wanger, his scenarist and director have stirred up a lot of sound and fury—the bloody, futile stand of Hoab Dabney's ragtag army of farmers against the artillery and cavalry of the Men in Gray is gory and ferocious—but the picture makes no impact for all its splash.

The weaknesses of "Tap Roots" are obvious. The script is a conglomeration of clichés, oral and visual, and none of the characters possess individuality or substance. The Dabneys, who wrested a fertile valley from the wilderness and established a dynasty where slavery is not recognized, are strong-willed, volatile people. Norma, the spirited belle of the house, is a sort of carbon-copy Scarlett O'Hara, a hussy with pretentions of refinement who experiences one romantic tragedy and comes to lusty life again in the arms of a cynical, hard-boiled newspaper editor.

It is unfortunate when a project of such dimensions as "Tap Roots" turns out so disappointingly, for it is obvious that much effort and expense went into its making. Moreover, we gather from persons familiar with the James Street novel which inspired the film that the author originally spun a lively tale about dynamic, individualistic personalities. But all that is of little consequence at the moment because the end product emerges as a sprawling fiction of no consequence.

Van Heflin as Keith Alexander, the forceful journalist of dubious ancestry, sometimes succeeds in making his performance interesting but on the whole it is uneven. Susan Hayward, generously endowed by nature and further enhanced by Technicolor, is, however, defeated at almost every turn by the script. Whitfield Connor is studiously ineffectual as the first man in her life, and Ward Bond, usually a solid actor, is pathetically unsound of mind in his final scenes amid the carnage in Lebanon Valley. Our old friend Boris Karloff appears to be getting in another rut, for he is playing an Indian again, though quite a civilized one this time.

Task Force

1949. Warner Brothers.  116 mins.  Available on VHS.

Jerry Wald - Producer

Delmer Daves - Screenwriter, Director

Alan Crosland, Jr. - Editor

Robert Burks, Wilfrid M. Cline - Cinematographers

Franz Waxman - Score

Leo K. Kuter - Art Director

Charles Lang - Sound

Leah Rhoads - Costume Designer
Perc Westmore - Makeup

Cast:
Gary Cooper - Jonathan L. Scott
Jane Wyatt - Mary Morgan
Wayne Morris - McKinney
Walter Brennan - Pete Richard
Julie London - Barbara McKinney
Bruce Bennett - McClusky
Jack Holt - Reeves
Stanley Ridges - Bentley
John Ridgely - Dixie Rankin
Richard Rober - Jack Southern
Art Baker - Senator Vincent
Moroni Olsen - Ames

PLOT: In pageant-like fashion, Warner Bros.' Task Force traces the history of the American aircraft carrier, as experienced by a group of naval air aces. Gary Cooper plays Admiral Jonathan L. Scott, who on the verge of retirement remembers his struggle to win recognition of the importance of aircraft carriers. The story begins in 1921, when Scott and his friend Pete Richard (Walter Brennan) were making dangerous landings on the primitive 65-foot carrier Langley. Scott's outspokenness wins him few friends among the brass, and after he publicly insults a Japanese diplomat on the subject of his beloved carriers, he is shunted away to a desk job. Naturally, once Pearl Harbor is attacked, Scott is vindicated. While his wife Mary (Jane Wyatt) waits patiently at home, Scott serves in World War II with distinction, guiding his carrier through a maze of Japanese artillery and kamikazes. Filmed in Technicolor, Task Force makes good use of actual color battle footage filmed by the Signal Corps. A brief clip from Task Force shows up in the drive-in movie scene in James Cagney's White Heat (1949). Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

New York Times review by Bosley Crowther  (October 1, 1949)

Now that sufficient interval has passed since the end of World War II for the public to look back on its torments with reflection and sentiment, Warner Brothers has come forth with a sizzling and sentimental film which traces the painful expansion of the Navy's air arm and its great use in the war. "Task Force" is the title of this long, semi-historic job which is part fiction, part documentary—and which opened at the Strand yesterday.

Calm, realistic recorders of the Navy's history may incline to look with some skepticism upon its slightly distorted review of the steps by which planes and aircraft carriers were slowly admitted to the fleet. Intra-department resistance, on the whole, was nowhere near as strong nor as obtuse in running down the airplane as it is here made to seem, they may claim. And certainly this picture's implication that a large aircraft carrier program was not accepted by the government until after the Battle of Midway is wrong.

Likewise a certain natural impulse to mingle a good bit of romance with the realities of naval history has been somewhat soggily indulged—a fact against which many patrons, not necessarily naval, may object. As much time is spent in the first half of this two-hour-long picture recording the romancing of a naval officer with his sweetheart (and wife) as tracing facts. And even the episodes of warfare in the Pacific, which are largely composed of actual naval combat footage, are spliced around chunks of sweet romance.

However, when the film is scanning the early flying exploits of a group of young naval aviators back in the old carrier Langley days, through scenes that have been recreated with vigor and cleverness, it has real historic interest. And some of the minor incidents in the tedious career of the patient hero, an old-time flier, have humorous point. It is hard to perceive the whole program of naval aviation symbolized in his career, but at least his determined efforts to foster flying reflect a general urge.

And, when the film finally comes to showing real carrier activity out at sea and the actual aspects of recent warfare, it springs into vivid, thrilling life. For not only has Delmer Daves, the author and director, filled it up with eye-filling documentary detail but he has used combat footage generously to capture the tension of battle and the crash of disaster on carrier decks.

Perhaps—and one can't avoid comparisons—he has not got the "feel" of carriers as well as it was got in "The Fighting Lady," that great documentary made during the war. But his scenes of aircraft launchings and recoveries on the windy decks, of ready-room waiting, flag-plot sweating and business in the C. I. C. (combat intelligence center) down in the bowels of the ship are full of exciting fascination and superlative imagery.

And, actually, Gary Cooper, after mushing the romantic scenes, does a pretty tight job of imitating an air officer and then a captain in the midst of war. His scenes as the operations officer in the Yorktown at the Battle of Midway are some of the best in the picture, so far as personal drama is concerned. And a good imitation of the late Marc Mitscher (without the name and with some liberties of fact) is given by Walter Brennan, who "sweats out" a battle beautifully. John Ridgely, Wayne Morris and Bruce-Bennett represent fliers credibly, and Jack Holt is wonderfully exalted in a couple of scenes as Admiral "Bull" Reeves. As Mr. Cooper's lady, Jane Wyatt does what the role demands, which is to be brave and inspiring and wrap up a sack of sentiment.

The coincidence of this picture at a time when the Navy is again fighting a battle for its aircraft should lend it a pertinence which may make it all the more sizzling for those who are in the "know." Certainly the general implications will not be entirely escaped. For this reason, it is ironic that the hero should find himself the skipper of the battered carrier, Franklin, the one that limped home, at the end of the film.

1944 - 1946       1947 - 1949      1950 - 1951