Ten North Frederick (1958)

Producer: Charles Brackett. Copyright 1958 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Paramount: 22 May 1958. U.S. release: May 1958. U.K. release: 29 June 1958. Australian release: 11 September 1958. 9,158 feet. 102 minutes.SYNOPSIS: It is 1945 and Joe Chapin is dead. At the funeral reception in his home at 10 North Frederick in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, his daughter Ann recalls the last five years of his life ... Goaded by an ambitious wife, Edith, who aspires to be the First Lady in Washington, Joe throws his hat in the political ring by offering a one-hundred-thousand dollar bribe to political boss Mike Slattery. At about this time, Ann meets trumpet player Charlie Bongiorno. When she falls in love, becomes pregnant, marries and then has a miscarriage, Joe protects his career by "buying off" Charlie and having the marriage annulled. Heart-broken, Ann leaves home for a book-store job in New York. Double-crossed by Slattery, Joe fails to get the nomination for lieutenant governor.COMMENT: A well-acted, but rather turgid and slow-moving melodrama. Director Dunne seems determined that not a word of his deathless dialogue be lost. Every word is meticulously enunciated — a stratagem guaranteed not to improve an already funereal pace. In other respects, unfortunately, Mr. Dunne is less scrupulous. He makes no attempts even to utilize the scope of the CinemaScope screen, let alone spice up the anti-heroics with dramatic and powerful compositions or imaginative camera placement and movement. His direction, in short, is stolidly uninteresting.Gary Cooper, Geraldine Fitzgerald and company fight a valiant but losing battle to keep the film alive for 102 way-overdue minutes.

About 15 years ago my daughter (about 13 at the time) and I were surfing channels and got in on the last 30 or 45 minutes of this movie. WOW, I had to own it and finally found it on VHS. A wonderful movie. One of my favorites of this genre.And Gary Cooper had his own style. This was a bit unlike his other... But he played it to a T... Cooper was a gentleman, and his wife an overbearing witch. His failures result from his being too nice of a guy to make him into the man she wanted him to be. It was wonderful that his daughter found out that he had been happy. And even in that happiness he was still a gentleman.

John O'Hara whose Pal Joey was brought to the screen the year before wrote the book Ten North Frederick on which this film is based. For some reason this is a film of Gary Cooper's that is rarely shown any more.Cooper is the WASP type upper crust patrician who has some political ambition. He's a well respected man in his area, except apparently in his own home. He's married to a woman who makes Lady MacBeth look like Mary Poppins. Geraldine Fitzgerald steals the acting honors in this film with her portrayal as the exponential shrew of a wife. Though I haven't seen Ten North Frederick in years, it's Fitzgerald's performance that has stayed with me and I suspect will stay with you if the film is ever going to see the light of day.Diane Varsi and Ray Stricklyn are the rebellious kids in the household who can't quite figure out all the hostility there, but they not something is radically wrong. Suzy Parker plays Varsi's friend with whom Cooper has a midlife crisis affair with. Believe me when you see Fitzgerald in this film, you won't blame Cooper in the slightest.Ten North Frederick set the standard for John O'Hara type soap operas and I'm surprised no one picked up on this one. With some updating this could easily be a plot for a prime time soap opera pilot.

Gary Cooper plays Joe Chapin, a very successful man turning fifty years old, prodded into state politics by his nagging wife, played by Geraldine Fitzgerald. Chapin shuns the political scene when he finds it going against the standards and principles he lives by. His wife soon makes him feel a loser and he finds solace in the arms of his daughter's roommate, half his age.Romantic and consuming; from the pen of Philip Dunne. This is an over looked drama shot in black and white. Daughter Ann is played by Diane Varsi and her roommate Kate is played by the lovely Suzy Parker. Also in the cast are Stuart Whitman and Ray Sticklyn.