Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

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The heat and the moisture came from an enormous tank filled with lukewarm water in which George Brent and Myrna Loy and Brenda Joyce were playing a scene while thousands of gallons of water descended on them in the form of tropical rain. There the three of them stood, drenched and gallant, going through what could only be described as an ordeal. There they were — Lady Esketh, Tom Ransome and Fern Simon — unmistakably real, Lady Esketh still in her Paris gown and diamonds, Ransome in his mud-bespattered dinner clothes, and Fern dressed in the shirt and shorts Ransome had loaned her a little while before. And they were standing on what was unmistakably the balcony of a house shattered by an earthquake and hidden as high as the second floor by the waters of the flood. And unmistakably it was the house of Mr. Bannerjee. I knew because the house of Mr. Bannerjee in the book was an exact description of a house which exists in India. If ever you see "The Rains," you will know what India looks like; you will even know how it feels. I HEN there was the matter of casting — one of the greatest difficulties in any story in which there are five or six leading roles of equal importance and a dozen roles of only slightly smaller dimensions. Before the cast was announced, the amateur casting of the various fat roles had become a kind of game among people interested in the story. For Lady Esketh, the names of Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Constance Bennett, Tallulah Bankhead, Ina Claire and a number of other actresses came up. The studio received thousands of letters urging this one or that one. And when the time came, Mr. Zanuck announced as his choice for the role an actress whom no one had mentioned. Myrna Loy seemed a strange choice. She had for a long time been playing role after role as far removed in character as possible from that of the wicked Lady Esketh. It seemed casting "against the part" with a vengeance. I was in Europe when I heard the news and admit that at first I was flabbergasted by the choice. It did not seem possible that the wife of the T7ii?i Man could also be Lady Esketh. I still had doubts when I walked on the set the first day. But after watching a half dozen "takes," the doubts vanished. Not only could Myrna Loy play Lady Esketh; she was Lady Esketh — the way she walked, the way she spoke, the air she had of being thwarted and desperate. But more than that — the personality of Miss Loy herself became revealed as of great importance. In the scenes where Lady Esketh was her most spiteful and hateful, a simplicity, a gentleness, came through the performance. One felt that in spite of everything, Lady Esketh wasn't so bad. Underneath everything, she was simply a nice, decent woman who at some time had been terribly hurt, and that element was of great importance to the latter half of the film. Then she falls in love and her character and actions change. I think that as Lady Esketh, Myrna Loy gives the best performance of her career. Tyrone Power had so many chances CCo»iti?iwed from page 27) to go "ham" in big emotional scenes — those scenes in which the line between a performance which is superb and one which is burlesque is no thicker than a hair. The role of Major Safti is an actor's delight. The actor called upon to play this has to do nearly everything. That is why it is a dangerous role. Tyrone never tripped, he never even stumbled — not even at the death of Lady Esketh (incidentally, owing to the business invented by Clarence Brown, one of the most beautiful scenes ever recorded) , the scene where Major Safti, weary, frightened and in despair, collapses into hysteria. UEORGE BRENT was a "natural." As Ransome he is charming, sadly gay, disillusioned and courageous. He has achieved what is an immensely difficult thing for an actor to do. He has conveyed brilliantly the despair of the spirit which lies beneath any actor, by speech of Ransome. I should think he would stir the hearts of countless ladies from New York to Los Angeles, from New Orleans to Chicago, as they have never been stirred before. About Brenda Joyce, who plays Fern, nobody knew anything. She came out of college to appear for the first time before the camera in one of the five big roles. It was a tall order, playing in scenes with veterans like Myrna Loy and George Brent and Tyrone Power and Madame Maria Ouspenskaya and Mary Nash. But here again things went miraculously right. Miss Joyce is very beautiful, but being beautiful wasn't enough to play a role like that of Fern. She was not only beautiful, she had intelligence and talent, and she had a face. When you see her on the screen, you will think at once: That is what Fer?i looked like. A girl determined to get what she wanted would look like that. There were, of course, things to be learned — tricks of technique and camera — but these she learned quickly. She was asked to go through the most terrible of ordeals for a young actress — jump into the midst of a cast of famous artists and hold her own. And Ouspenskaya — one could write a whole book on this great actress. For a long time she had been studying plays and pictures in roles in which she appeared for only a few minutes. In "The Rains" she was presented with a great, fat part in which she was called upon to do almost everything an actress can do. And she went to town. A tiny woman, she was called upon to play most of her scenes with men over six feet — H. B. Warner, Tyrone Power, George Brent, Nigel Bruce — but in none of them do you have a feeling that she is a tiny woman barely five feet tall. One face I think will haunt you long after you have left the theater, and that is the face of Mary Nash playing the saintly, tortured Miss MacDaid. It is not a big part but the performance is heartbreaking. I could not be more grateful to a cast for their intelligence and understanding. Nigel Bruce's brutal Lord Esketh, Laura Hope Crews' incredibly funny Mrs. Haggett-Egbury, Joseph Schildkraut's Mr. Barrengor, Marjorie Rambeau's tormented and shallow Mrs. Simon, Abner Biberman's "John the Baptist" — they all come to life as the author saw them. And no author can experience a greater satisfaction. I think all this perfection — of script, of cast, of direction, of background and atmosphere — came about because one of those miracles occurred which seldom happens in Hollywood. The miracle was that everyone connected with the picture felt the same way about it. There were no confusions of cross-purposes. They all liked the job — despite even the rain and mud and other discomforts— and they all wanted to make a good job of it. There was a complete unity of aim and effort. In this case Mr. Zanuck conceived a certain cast and production for the story and he went ahead with determination and energy to achieve it. His conception was right and it clicked. To click it needed the co-operation of a couple of hundred people and the quiet efficiency and good humor of Harry Joe Brown. Somehow the miracle came through — at least for one person, the author, it happened. It was a production which, despite the immense technical difficulties and the difficulties of a large and distinguished cast, moved easily, and with no trouble or complications to its end. For that I think Clarence Brown, a director loved by actors, should take a deep bow. And, as for the whole cast, they were saints. For weeks they worked in pouring rain or actually in the water. For days they worked in mud literally three feet deep, uncomplainingly, out of love for a story and characters they were playing. Laura Hope Crews and Marjorie Rambeau refused doubles and for two days played scenes which took place in the mucky residue of the flood. To Arthur Miller, the man on the camera, and his assistants, who had to photograph thousands of feet of film in pouring monsoon rain and get the difficult effect of the burning Indian sun, there should go a whole bunch of orchids. It was no easy job. To Mr. Mehra who did the Indian music, so difficult to translate into Western idiom, there should go a medal, and to my old friend, Al Newman, who did the scoring, a reward for the beauty and faithfulness to mood which he achieved in the musical accompaniment. IT was a happy production — amazingly so, considering that the entire cast was made up of temperamental stars, leading women and character actors. They were drenched with rain, spattered with mud and shaken up by the most realistic earthquake ever seen on the screen. And there was plenty of comedy too — like the occasion when the author was mistaken by the casting director for one of the "extras" upon whom in the book itself he had lavished satire and derision And the day the monkeys all got loose with Dorothy Thompson visiting the set and the technical men, their patience worn thin, turned on the author for writing a story filled with earthquakes, floods, plagues, rain and monkeys. The monkeys took refuge in the top of the sound stage and couldn't be gotten down for a week. And the moment when in the midst of a tragic and passionate scene between Myrna Loy and Ty Power, they both discovered at the same second that the lines they were speaking had a very funny double meaning. Well, this is the story of a miracle in itself — the story of a satisfied and grateful author — grateful to everyone concerned with the production of "The Rains Came." It is a miracle which the writer does not expect to have happen twice in his lifetime. For the public, whatever else is true, it will, I think, see real and living India on the screen for the first time. 76 PHOTOPLAY