Both versions focus on six characters. British aristocrats Lord and Lady Esketh, Edwina and Albert (Myrna Loy and Nigel Bruce), have come to India around monsoon season so that he can buy some of the Maharajah's prized horses. Their marriage is not a happy one mainly because Lord Esketh is not a very nice man and Lady Esketh is looking for love elsewhere.
She finds it in Dr. Rama Safti (Tyrone Power) who is dedicated to his work with the sick and poor and loyal to the Maharani (Maria Ouspenskaya) but Edwina bewitches the good doctor. Their affair seems to annoy everyone else which includes a mutual friend, Tom Ransome (George Brent). He is an alcoholic who came to India to paint the Maharani's portrait and stayed, partly because he is loved and looked after by a young American, Fern, played by Brenda Joyce, a future Jane of several Tarzan movies, in her film debut.
The palace goes all out for the Eskeths, hosting parties and making sure everyone meets them, but the formidable Maharani does not like Edwina because of her affair with the good doctor, whom the royal fears will neglect his duties.
All changes when an earthquake causes a dam to break resulting in a flood that devastates most of the city and kills many of its inhabitants, including Lord Eskweth. Edwina renounces her playgirl ways and, out of love for the doctor, joins him in caring for the many who now suffer from cholera. The lovers have questioned throughout the story the chance of their relationship attaining any permanency but it all becomes moot when Edwina, too, dies from the disease. Dr. Safti continues with the work that has always been his life's mission.
Director Clarence Brown steered his impressive cast with all the aplomb he was known for but my problem, with both versions, is the two leads. It's been stated frequently how much I liked Power as an actor and a favorite object of gazing (never better than in 1939) and I just adored Loy. And while she is good here, she is cast against type (Lady Eskweth is no lady) and more importantly, she and Power just did not click as a couple. She was nine years older than he was and looked it. She tended to look older and more matronly while he always looked younger and more playful. Neither is the other one's type.
With his skin darkened and usually turbaned, Power certainly turns Dr. Safti into an exotic creature. He pulls off playing an Indian and it's refreshing that there isn't a racist moment to be found. While the love affair is a forbidden one, it has nothing to do with race.
I was always taken with the role of the Maharani in both films. While I mentioned the characters are formidable, so were the actresses playing them. Maria Ouspenskaya in this version and Eugenie Leontovich in the sequel were both tiny Russian actresses who slipped easily and imperiously into playing Indian royalty.
The Rains Came was nominated for six Oscars, winning the well-deserved special effects, the first time for this category, and beating out The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. It was apparently a happy set for all to work on.
I suspect of the two films, most people preferred The Rains Came but I was more a fan of The Rains of Ranchipur. By no means a great movie or perhaps even a very good one, it was colorful, amusing and engaged a cast that certainly captured my attention. Being made 16 years after the original, the special effects were even better and captured an Oscar nomination as they should have. It is beautifully filmed in Technicolor, whereas its predecessor was in black and white.
Perhaps more than anything, it gave glamour queen Lana Turner another one of those roles where she didn't have to work too hard and although she had moved through her youthful beauty, she was still a sight to behold. To tell the truth, if Edwina was a stretch for Myrna Loy, playing a tramp was as natural for Turner as reaching for that bottle of peroxide.
Whereas the role of Lord Esketh in the original was played as a cad, here Michael Rennie is a good guy, the cuckolded husband with a kind heart and a British aristocracy that fit him like a glove. He is in a frosty marriage with a (now American) wife that he somehow still loves despite her not only having many boyfriends but parading them in front of him.
Before their train departure in Ranchipur, they have a revealing conversation in their private car when she accuses him of marrying her for her extensive wealth and he knows she married him for his title, no matter how tarnished.
She admits he's not bad-looking and an antidote for her loneliness. She sees that he can be amusing and she likes to be amused. She also feels a sense of protection, not from him personally, to easily rid herself of her boyfriends who wanted to make things more permanent. She flashed her wedding ring, wrote them a check and sent them away.
He does not mention that he loves her, despite all, and though she acts as if she's not giving him her full attention, he tells her that she is selfish, greedy, corrupt and decadent. When she looks a bit wounded, he adds that she couldn't possibly be hurt because she has no heart. He deflects her slap.
Neither of the Eskeths die in this version nor does she help her lover/doctor nurse the many afflicted. Instead, when she gets sick friend Tom takes her to another friend's house for looking after. She comes close to dying and after recovering is annoyed to hear the good doctor didn't come to visit her, though he knew she was ill. She pays no mind to the dangerous river he would have to navigate and the many hundreds he would leave unattended. Well, gee, Lord Esketh said she was selfish.
At the end her lover meets her in the grand foyer of the palace to say goodbye, telling her that he will miss her and always love her but he realizes his calling cannot be disregarded. She understands, apparently, although she's likely still pissed about his not visiting her. She gets in the car with her husband and holds his hand as they drive off.
Fox contract director Jean Negulesco excelled at big-budget, glossy, romantic melodramas in the 1950's and it seemed a given that he would come aboard this one. Handling large casts and big egos were also his specialty. He was, however, not impressed with Burton whose only real American claim to fame up to this point was in The Robe (1953). He had a contract at Fox for a few movies and Ranchipur was forced upon him. He didn't put much into it. A turban does not an Indian doctor make.
Burton and Turner had zero chemistry, which she mentioned in her autobiography. She meant on the screen but one wonders about off screen especially when one considers that both were prone to sleeping with their costars. Burton once said he slept with all but a couple of his leading ladies. If true, it's difficult to believe he passed on Turner.
No one ever confused Turner with great actresses but she was a great movie star and knew everything there was to know about presenting herself on the silver screen. She knew, too, what roles were right for her and ones that were not. She didn't always have to be in the best films but she had to be the female star and she had to know and approve of who was doing hair, makeup and costuming. In 1955 no one could have portrayed Lady Esketh any better than Miss Lana Turner.
Her best scenes were with Eugenie Leontovich as the Maharani (a widow in this version). Given that the two characters had little regard for one another, their scenes together glitter. Leontovich is a marvel in the role.
Tom Ransome is a dull character (a lapsed bridge builder) which is clearly why someone thought of Fred MacMurray to play him and the same could be said for George Brent in the original. I've probably made it pretty clear that MacMurray bored me to death and yet this is the film (along with Double Indemnity) in which I liked him the best.
Joan Caulfield, who enlivened some Paramount films in the 40's, hadn't had a decent film role in several years and would only make a few B films after Ranchipur, a role she surely got because her husband at the time, Frank Ross, was the producer. She provided what light comedy there is and although also blonde (Turner didn't like other blondes in her movies), she was a sweet tomboy type here, a marked difference from Turner's haughty glamour.
Rennie's role is largely underwritten but he raised the visibility of every picture he made and was elegant enough to stand arm-in-arm with Fred Astaire, David Niven and Cary Grant but never had that star wattage. Too bad. Like all the others, except Burton, he was divinely cast. We'll visit with him next month.
Tragic though it would have been in real life, I was agog at the dam-breaking and subsequent flood scenes, again truly the highlight of both versions. Fox wasn't expecting awards here but rather a big crowd-pleaser. On that level it succeeded.
Next posting:
The actor who hated being one
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