We Hold These Truths - Hollywood Broadcast

A week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a program celebrating the 150^thanniversary of the Bill of Rights was produced on all four radio networks of the day – CBS, NBC Red and Blue networks, and the Mutual network.  It was narrated by James Stewart, and a host of Hollywood players joined him in bringing to life not only the struggles of post-Revolutionary War America to come up with this Bill of Rights, but how important it was to reflect on it, and rely on it, in a time of modern troubles.  The program was performed live.

It is a remarkable and deeply emotional dramatization that not only speaks to us today, but sings, shouts, cries, and cheers.  Norman Corwin wrote the beautiful script, performed on December 15, 1941, and it is estimated over half the U.S. population listened to it.  Performed in a Hollywood studio, live hookups also included performances in New York City, and an address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Washington, D.C.  Bernard Herrmann composed original music for the program, and at the very end of the show, Maestro Leopold Stokowski conducted “The Star Spangled Banner.”

James Stewart was, at that time, a corporal in the Army Air Corps, loaned to the project for the occasion.  His fellow players included Edward Arnold, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Brennan Marjorie Main, Bob Burns, Walter Huston, Edward G. Robinson, Rudy Vallee, and Orson Welles.

Walter Huston, rolling his r’s, introduces the program.  Then, the familiar voice of Lionel Barrymore is brought to the mic.

“My name is Barrymore. I’m one of several actors gathered in the studio in California….”  He joins 130 million fellow Americans in praise of a document “that men have fought for, that men are fighting for…”

He announces the cast, and adds, “Our names are meaningless unless your names are added.”  

Then one by one, the cast fills in, leaving their Hollywood personas and adopting the guise, in our imaginations, of post-Revolutionary Americans.  Jimmy Stewart like his character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939),which we covered in this post, leads us on a tour of modern Washington, D.C., and as he describes monuments and their inscriptions, we are reminded of the movie, for he is intentionally channeling Mr. Smith’s awe and wonder.  

Not only the message, but the script beams with elegant writing, no longer in fashion.  Perhaps it is too idealistic, and we have learned to distrust everything.  

On the National Archives building it is written,  “ What is past, is prologue.”  We hear the clicking of footsteps as Stewart climbs the stone steps to see the Bill of Rights in glass – the old parchment with faded writing.  Then Stewart and the other actors proceed to bring it alive.  “The words are dim, but not the meaning of the words…”  Perhaps not.  Perhaps we need this lesson.

Stewart brings us to the hall as the great men rise to speak and call the roll, to sign their names the draft when Constitution is written, which is then brought back to the states for review, but the people are suspicious.  They want guarantees of certain protections.  And so, this is the story of how the Bill of Rights came to be added as the most important addendum in history.  

Other actors jump in to be those common people in the different states who express their curiosity for the new document, but who want more guarantees, more explanations of just what they have won in the Revolutionary War.

Walter Huston is a blacksmith.   He doesn’t want anyone telling him he has to pray the way somebody else tells him.  Doesn’t like state religion.  Wants to make sure there won’t be any.

Others are suspicious of authority.  They know that just wanting law and order isn’t enough—Nero had such.   

Marjorie Main plays a woman whose husband died in the war.  She wants guarantees that he didn’t die  in vain.

Edward Arnold is a bricklayer who argues that the work is unfinished.  There’s only a foundation and no house.

So many voices, so much dissent, so much yearning for rights.   We are taken on a journey not only through history, but through the minds and souls of this nation.

Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison lend their voices, and George Mason warning us not only about a monarchy, but a “tyrannical aristocracy” taking over, the monied class.

Now the First Congress begins sifting through the amendments to the Constitution and hammering them out for the future.  It’s not an easy job, but it’s important and they persist.  Stewart passionately narrates, cajoles, shouts.

Most profound is Orson Welles’ impassioned speech.  He takes over at this point and adds the other voices to the founders of the Bill of Rights – not just the men in Congress, but from the victims of the ages – “They had much help, the many nameless and unknown – from bleeding mouths, burnt flesh – from numberless and nameless agonies.  The delegates from dungeons, they were there.  The delegates from ashes at the bottoms of the stakes were there.”

We hear a voice, weak, pleading.

Orson continues, “The gallows delegates, whose corpses lifted gently in the breeze, they too…”

His voice grows booming, horrified:  “The Christians killed for being Christians, Jews for being Jews, the Quakers hanged in Boston town, they made a quorum also… The murdered men, the lopped off hands, the shattered limbs, the red welts where the whip lash bit into the back.  Must you know what they said?  Must you know how they argued?  Must you be told the evidence?

“Listen, then!”

We hear a blood-curdling scream.

“That was an argument for an amendment.”

They are words for our times, how shockingly, sickeningly current.

“How much of all this must be told to be believed?  How much of this must be diagramed: X marks the spot where decency was last observed?”

Nero was there, Caligula, Cotton Mather, all the tyrants were observing in the hall.  “All the long and bloody history of fanaticism, murder in the name of God.”  

Christ was there too.  “He, too, sat in the Congress, the mild Man, with scars in His hands and feet where the spikes went through.  He was a consultant in the business at hand.  Had He not died because the rulers of the realm denied free speech?  Was He not nailed up on a cross between two thieves because His preachments were considered treason?”

Orson growls, wails his words.  “Out of the agonies, out of crisscrossed scars of all the human race they made a Bill of Rights for their own people…To stand against the enemies within, connivers, fakers, those who lust for power, those who make of their authority an insolence.”

Listen to Orson’s impassioned speech, and think of now.

The Bill of Rights “Threw up a bulwark…and made a sign for their posterity against the bigots, the fanatics, bullies, lynchers, race haters, the cruel men, the spiteful men, the sneaking men, the pessimists…”

The Bill of Rights is ratified!  Jimmy Stewart breathes easier and brings the document to the thirteen states.

Then Edward Arnold, Walter Huston, Marjorie Main, Walter Brennan and others join in as the amendments are read, each one, and voices answer to illustrate what each one means.  We go to the homes of farmers, the blacksmith shop, all the new citizens.  The war gave them separation from Great Britain, but the Constitution and the Bill of Rights makes them citizens.

We hear a woman tending the grave of her soldier husband.  We hear a Colonial folk tune.  Through all, James Stewart’s folksy ruminating weaves a thread to guide us to the present.  Edward G. Robinson is a political protester who praises the rights that allow him to speak and fight corruption in city hall.

“A promise is a promise,” Jimmy Stewart says, “Has America’s been kept?”

It is a fair question, but in only a short time Japanese Americans would have their rights taken away by virtue of their ethnicity.  It was not the Bill of Rights that failed them; it was their fellow citizens and a president and government who shamefully allowed their mistreatment.  Even in those days when war was declared and Americans were coming together for mutual support, even in times of great pride, patriotism and cheerleading, something monstrously unfair could occur.  How much easier it is to occur in times when we are not one, when we are fighting amongst ourselves?  When a foreign enemy knows how to divide and conquer.  Abraham Lincoln said:

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” 

We've come to that suicidal brink, however, with the aid of Vladimir Putin’s mafia, and the fascism that is rotting our government. We have far superior technology in our media than they did when this radio program was broadcast in December 1941, but we have lost the gift of eloquence that they possessed then.  Such well-written and carefully crafted words would today seem to be talking above the heads of the crowds whom the spokesmen try to reach.  Maybe because they are above the intelligence of the spokesmen.

This was a live program, so neatly coordinated, so passionately and intimately put together.  Listen to this program and marvel not only at how it was written, acted, and produced according to the technology of the day when we were only a week at war, but marvel – for God’s sake, marvel at the message of warning, of love, and of integrity, of pride for our Bill of Rights.

At the end of the program, James Stewart introduces in a soft, gentle voice President Roosevelt, who then speaks live from Washington, D.C.   “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the people of the United States.”

Of the people.

It was reported by Screen Guide magazine in the March 1942 issue, from which some of these photos are taken, that after James Stewart introduced the President, he ripped off his earphones at the mic, and burst into tears.

Listen to We Hold These Truths or download at the Internet Archive, or here at YouTube.

Easy Living - 1937

Easy Living (1937), despite the surface of innocent goofiness, is a remarkably sophisticated reflection of Depression-era attitudes and coping.  We should expect nothing less from the marvelous Jean Arthur.

The tale is deftly told, both in term of script, direction, and the precise timing of the actors; and yet the premise is ridiculously simple: Jean Arthur, a struggling working girl rides in an open-top bus and an expensive fur coat lands on her head.  That triggers a series of events involving mistaken impressions, taking us and Jean on a riotous adventure.  Along the way fools are exposed, suffer consequences of their own making, and are ultimately redeemed.  There are no real villains or heroes—though Jean is an Everywoman who rides the waves with dogged determination to just get by.

Edward Arnold plays a blustering millionaire banker with his usual aplomb, but this is no bad guy such as he played in Meet JohnDoe (1941).  We really have to admire his ability to use basically the same techniques and equipment to play sinister as well as he does silly.  One of Hollywood’s most talented and solid character actors, Mr. Arnold could do both with ease.  Part of the film's sophistication lies in the very presentation of Edward Arnold’s character, though rich and supporting an indolent wife and son living in wasteful fashion, his not being an evil rich man.  He’s really just a regular guy—not overly nice, but not overly terrible, either.  Just a guy; and we may even feel sorry for him when his spendthrift son, played by Ray Milland, spends $11,000 for a foreign sports car, and his wife (played by Mary Nash) spends $58,000 on yet another fur coat (she has a closet full of them.)  Fed up, Mr. Arnold throws the new fur coat off the roof of their townhouse.

Though the cook’s charge to him, “Go fry yourself in lard, you dirty capitalist,” is pretty funny, it's a lightweight comment on Arnold's extreme wealth; he’s just mad he was told to use lard in his cooking.

The fur coat lands on Jean’s head, and though she attempts to return it when she meets up with Arnold, he insists she keep it because he’s furious with his wife.  She does not know it’s mink; he has told her (because his wife has told him, in a lie) that it is a Kolinsky, which is a species of weasel from which inexpensive coats were made (as well as artist’s sable brushes).

She is also blissfully unaware that those who have observed her with Edward Arnold and wearing his gift of a mink coat—believe that she is his mistress.  The fawning florist, played by the wonderful Franklin Pangborn, who can take disdain and disgust to levels of high art, and Mr. Louis Louis, played by Luis Alberni, who runs a downtown hotel and is in debt to Banker Arnold are two such gossipers.  He offers Jean a resplendent suite in the hotel to appease Mr. Arnold, curry his favor, and get him to extend his loan.  Soon, the whole town is talking about Banker Arnold and his mistress, but he has no idea of the gossip, and neither does Jean.  But her newfound reputation as a kept woman has left her jobless—her publisher at The Boy’s Constant Companion fires her for the rumors over her questionable lifestyle—and has left her homeless, as she is  behind in her rent already, and being without a job will put her on the streets.

Two indelible scenes are the result: when Jean smashes her piggy bank for food money and comes up with only a couple coins, and when she takes the coins to the Automat.  We covered the old movies’ love affair with New York’s Automat in this previous post.

The piggy bank is a master class in comedy.  Jean puts a Kleenex blindfold on the pig before she tries to hit him with her shoe.  Her first swipe misses completely—no one does comedy like this better.  We are all prepared for the smashing of the ceramic pig, and she bangs the dresser top with the heel of her shoe instead, just missing the pig.  We are fooled, and it’s hysterical.

The Automat is more of a traditional set-up to a food fight.  Ray Milland, son of the millionaire banker, is, unexpectedly, working there as a busboy.  He and his father have split over differences and Ray has no income beyond his father’s largesse.  He feels sorry for Jean, tries to slip her some food from the Automat’s little cubbies, but the boss catches him and a furious melee ensues with street crowds coming in to take advantage of the chaos and eat free food.

It’s the Great Depression.  Nobody in the audience blames them for trying to sneak a meal, but no one is sorry, either, when some of them get the worst of the food fight.  Ray Milland’s not the hero, and the boss who catches him isn’t the bad guy, but nobody blames anybody for doing what they have to, to survive, and to maybe make life a little happier.

But even though everybody’s side is understandable, there is a brilliant put-down to everybody not to take themselves so seriously.  The stuffy and officious publisher of the boy’s magazine (just the name “The Boy’s ConstantCompanion” is a suggestion of unrelenting bludgeoning piety), is told off by Jean, “You don’t have to get mad just because you’re so stupid.”

Ray, of course, loses his job after the Automat food riot, and Jean, feeling sorry for him, invites him to stay at her palatial suite at Luis Alberni’s hotel.  We tease the Production Code in several scenes, most notably when they both lie in different directions, but head-to-head on a divan close together and engage in sleepy pillow talk.  He seals a quick kiss, and she rouses, but instead of shock or insult, smiles at him with delightful cheeky knowing, and it’s the ol’ Fade to Black.

Of course, in the next scene, she wakes up alone in her large bedroom, and we are told Ray just went out that earlier that morning, so we really don’t know where he spent the night and, with what is true sophistication—it isn’t dwelled on.  We can connect whatever dots we want to ourselves.

Just a note as well on the phone conversations: Jean speaks into two phones at once at her bedside when she is roused by other people wanting to curry the banker’s favor to offer her stuff.  She has no idea what’s happening, she’s harried, a little panicked, and she speaks as if she’s really trying to have two phone conversations at once.  (“I just want to brush my teeth!”)  She never leaves the audience with the impression that she’s faking it; we can easily believe there are people talking to her and badgering her with their salesmanship.

Though her hotel flat is opulent, to say the least, it is not presented—either by Mr. Alberni’s grand tour of the place or in Jean’s reaction to it—as something we should envy.  It all seems less awesome than it is comical, including the large shell-like bathtub that leaves everyone who examines it stupefied as to what it is.  The scene where Ray and Jean inspect it, and accidently get caught in a sudden spray of multi-water jets, is another cheeky jab at the censors as the couple innocently and fully clothed share a bath together in bacchanalian setting.

Another proof of Edward Arnold’s being just a guy is his insistence when he takes a room at this hotel, that he wants “a room with a bath.”  Alberni tries to—wink, wink, nudge, nudge—get him a joining suite with Jean, but Mr. Arnold insists grumpily he wants a room with a bath, as if he’s at the YMCA.

By the way, some of the best exchanges are the rapport between blustering boss and his secretary played by the wonderful Esther Dale.

Ray and Jean are falling for each other, and even though he doesn’t seem like a hero worthy of our Jean, if not the sharpest tool in the shed, he’s a nice guy.  She proves to be the biggest mensch of the lot: when a series of daffy circumstances brings her $18,000 from a stock tip, she gleefully shares half of it with Milland, as if they are teenagers going Dutch at the malt shop.

It is only at the end of the story that she finally understands that Alberni thinks she’s Edward Arnold’s mistress.  Her indignation is smashing: “And you thought I took a sable coat from him?!” She slaps him twice.  We’ve been waiting for that.

To juggle all these characters with their separation motivations, foibles, and failings and make them all gloriously ridiculous but likeable, and to keep Jean the moral compass of all is a splendid coping mechanism with the social, psychological, and emotional ills of the day.  The wolf might not have been at the door in Hollywood where stars made fabulous salaries and moguls owned them, but the movie industry had canny knowledge of what the public wanted, what it needed, and what it was willing to take.  Classic films, like popular music of the day, were a barometer of hard times, good times, scary times.  Despite splashy musical fantasies, there was more that was real in old Hollywood than there is today.  There was a fearlessness, as if, along with Jean, we dare to survive and even to be happy, because there is nothing left to lose. There is something quintessentially American in such good-hearted sensible…nonsense.

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Come back next Thursday when we sit in court with William Powell in For the Defense (1930).

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