H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)

Hedy Lamarr didn't move from Austria to Hollywood to make money and achieve fame, although her parents persuaded her to engage in the performing arts industry. Perhaps, because she was not as 'industrious' as some actresses, she could be convincing on film without much effort. Hedy didn't have to try to be beautiful, she was a natural. Hedy's female co-star, Bonita Granville was a petite little blonde (5' tall) who had a figure that would be appreciated in film today where women don't wear girdles. same with Hedy....she had a beautiful butt.Hedy was a scientist first, a movie star second. She did almost as much for the WWII allied effort as Golda Meir did for Israel, raising millions in war bonds. Hedy was still young and in demand in Hollywood when she retired. Do I wish I was born longer ago and could have met Hedy? Of course, although, being born in 1941 on Pearl Harbor Day,I am lucky to be alive during the 'electronic age' which fits nicely into my demeanor. As for the film....any movie starring Hedy Lamarr is a good movie.

It was just about a dozen years earlier that Vidor persuaded MGM to allow him to film "The Crowd." That film dealt with ordinary people struggling to find happiness and personal satisfaction.It has been said "The Crowd" was allowed by Irving Thalberg as a bonus prize to Vidor for turning in so many lucrative films over the years. It's clear "The Crowd" was an experimental, prestige picture that Thalberg though should be a limited part of a major studio's repertoire.Where "The Crowd" is about the individual seeking success and solace in a quest to better himself, so "H. M. Putham, Esq." likewise is about a one's desire to find happiness and peace of mind amidst the daily routine of society. Where the former is set in a lower class environment, the latter is in the upper. The basic problems remain the same: Is one sure others really love them, or mere think they do? Where does dull dutifulness end and lively spontaneity begin? Both of these heroes settle for what they've got in the end, and reside to what circumstances has dealt them. Thus we have two experimental Vidor films, with "The Crowd" being the more financially successful of the two. Personally, I respect and like both equally. "Putham" is very subtle in script, directing and acting, and requires the viewer to pay close attention to small details. There's nothing explosive or overly dramatic about it, just subdued emotion mirroring real life.It's beautifully played by Hedy Lamarr in one of her best roles, Robert Young in an under-played manner, and Ruth Hussey as a stabilizing element. One of the most experimental films a major studio ever released.

H.M. Pulham, Esq. comes from a novel by John P. Marquand, the same man who wrote The Late George Apley. This man definitely knew his Boston and apparently was of the opinion that it was indeed the most civilized place on the globe or at least in the Western Hemisphere.The title character is played by Robert Young whom we meet on the eve of World War II a seemingly content and successful businessman who gets a pair of calls that set him thinking about his life. The first is from a former Harvard classmate Leif Erickson who is organizing a class reunion. The second is from a woman whom he had a fling with back in the day before he married Ruth Hussey. That would be the drop dead gorgeous Hedy Lamarr.This sets Young to thinking about what might have been and we got back to the days before, during, and after World War I when Young was much younger and unattached. After service in the Great War as they called it back then, he's decided that there is more to the world than the confines of Back Bay Boston. He decides to go to work for an advertising agency in New York. It's there that he meets Lamarr.Hedy's a free spirit, not at all like the girls back home like Ruth Hussey. She's in fact being courted by Van Heflin who is another of Young's Harvard crowd and who's a odd fish in that crowd as well. The mores of Beacon Hill are just not Hedy's style and Young has to face that.The film version of The Late George Apley ends before World War I and that was an event that impacted nearly all on the globe, one way or another. The Pulhams were probably just like the Apleys before the war. In fact Marquand had George Apley describing a youthful indiscretion with an Irish girl, definitely not of their crowd. If you know what happened there, you know how H.M. Pulham, Esq. resolved things and answered his own questions.Even in Boston there's such a thing as a midlife crisis which is what Young is going through. H.M. Pulham, Esq. is a really cute film with a gorgeous Hedy Lamarr and a stalwart Robert Young. Leif Erickson got one of his best parts in film as the overage college jock whose high point in life was playing football for Harvard. Phil Brown is also good as Young's friend from childhood who went to Harvard with him, but is very clueless about anything that's not got the Boston seal of approval.H.M. Pulham, Esq. ought to be seen back to back with The Late George Apley, it's like watching Apley in a different generation in many respects.

What a remarkable movie! It contains, as far as I've seen her, Hedy Lamarr's best performance ever...she's luminous here, human, warm, heart-wrenching, not the aloof goddess of other MGM films (which I like too, by the way). She gives a complex, multi-layered performance as a liberal, independent, unprejudiced, modern working woman who falls in love with a lad (grandly impersonated by Robert Young) who comes from an aristocratic, old fashioned, "blue-blood" family from Boston.They meet while working together in an advertising/publicity company, but their relationship is not an easy one, due to Marvin's (Hedy) unease with his family's morals, mores and ways...The movie is told in flashback, with Harry Pulham (Robert Young) remembering his childhood and younger days, when he's well into his forties and married to a woman of his same "Social Circle" (Ruth Hussey-what a good actress she was, giving a first-rate performance in a role so different from the one she played the previous year in "The Philadelphia Story").You can tell this movie was directed by a first rate director like King Vidor, who could handle so well "sociological" issues.Good performances too by Van Heflin as Young's pal, Bonita Granville as his sister, Charles Coburn as his father et al.An engrossing film, watch it on TCM, where it's scheduled regularly.