Good 50's Films: The Proud and Profane

1956 Romantic Drama
From Paramount Pictures
Directed by George Seaton

Starring
William Holden
Deborah Kerr
Thelma Ritter
Dewey Martin
William Redfield
Adam Williams

Shining a spotlight on lesser known movies is such a kick.  This one has always remained memorable to me because I was crazy about William Holden and Deborah Kerr and saw every movie each made in the 50's.  It was a glorious time at the box office for both of them.  To be more specific, it was their best decade, each turning out hit after hit after hit.

The Proud and Profane is not one of them.  It is not a bad movie at all but it is also not perfect and it is completely right to not include it in with their mega-hits.  But it is the only opportunity to see them act together and for that alone I am grateful for this movie.

Perhaps one reason for its lack of box office clout is because both stars eschew their normal screen personas.  Holden was pretty much always a good guy and while not a villain here, he is not  likable.  Kerr is known chiefly for her prim and proper roles which she shelves here to play a harder character, similar, in fact, to my favorite of all Kerr performances in From Here to Eternity (1953).  In fact, in some ways, it feels like these filmmakers were out to do their own version of FHTE.  Audiences, particularly less discerning ones, tend to like their favorite actors to vary little from the usual and as such, The Proud and Profane likely came off as a disappointment.  While I liked the story, it is the actors (all six listed above) that floated my boat.

Kerr plays Lee Ashley, a sensitive, self-pitying, recent war widow who becomes a volunteer with the Red Cross in an effort to find out the details of her husband's death on Guadalcanal.  She is assigned to the island of New Caledonia where some 8,000 Army, Navy and Marines are being trained to take part in the action northward.  She is picked up from a ship by her new boss, Kate Connors (Ritter), to the tune of catcalls and whistles.  Kate sees an immediate problem when Lee advises she cannot stand to see suffering. 

Lt. Col. Colin Black (Holden) has just landed on New Caledonia after a battle and expresses to Kate that he doesn't like or appreciate Red Cross women because they pamper his men and make them soft.  He is a tough man, arrogant, pompous and misogynistic.  His interest in women at all is a singular one.

He first sees Lee through binoculars as she is lying and writhing on a towel at the water's edge (shades of FHTE but solo?).  Kate introduces them and he immediately says something insulting and she is clearly not amused.

Kate tells the colonel of Lee's husband's death and he says he knows nothing about it.  A scene or two later, however, he tells Lee that he knew her husband and knows how he died.  While not directly addressed, it is obvious he is lying so that she will see him and they get to know one another better.

Soon they're involved in a romance.  That is the film's greatest shortcoming because it's inconceivable this kind of woman would be involved with this kind of man and that film does nothing to particularly explain the attraction.  It's a wtf moment but hey, there wouldn't be much of a movie without it.  He is clearly a most unpleasant, uncompromising bully of a man.

One of Kerr's emotionally-charged scenes is one where Lee tells Kate that she doesn't understand why she's in a relationship with a man so hard, degrading, violent and cruel and one who always tells her, never asks.  She cries that she's shutting out decency by allowing herself to be treated so poorly.  She says she's rolling downhill and can't stop herself.

One of the actress' best scenes ever (did you hear that? E-V-E-R) comes when she takes the colonel to a bluff where they've previously canoodled to confront him and also give him some news.  She asks him when he intended to tell her that he's married.  He swears it's the emotional part of the marriage has long been over but he also tells her that what he and Lee have had is just a good time so really, what's the problem?

She responds bitterly by asking him if he's going to be that cavalier when he explains it all to the son or daughter they're going to have?  Overlooking a cliff, it's clear she's contemplating suicide.  As her anger boils over she backhands him across the face with the fury of a woman who has been played.  He pushes her down, causing her to lose her child.  It is a gripping scene.

Another scene I loved and one that brings tears to my eyes is when she visits her husband's grave for the first time.  She is dressed in her spotless Red Cross uniform and holding flowers.  She doesn't know exactly where the grave is in the large cemetery when a man (Williams) approaches her.  He takes her to the grave and says he is the only survivor from the skirmish that killed Ashley, his superior, whom he liked and respected.  He says the only thing that ever seemed to bother Ashley was his terrible marriage with a  controlling wife.

As he apologizes for talking too much, he asks the Red Cross worker in her spotless uniform what her name is and she says Mrs. Howard Ashley.  Thank you so much. 

William Redfield plays a Marine clergyman.  He has two of the film's scenes that explains the two characters.  Early on he has a confrontational scene with Holden about his brutality and his arrogance.  The colonel, of course, has the same contempt for the clergy that he has for the nurses.  He doesn't want his men softened and coddled.  He doesn't want them to be friendly with anyone.  He makes it clear that his men are killing machines and they must pass muster at all times.

The speech, if not the film, is equally brutal to Marines in general... if not the type of men they are, then the type they become.  If Colonel Black is what the Marines aspire to (and isn't he?), it's regarded as a sad commentary by some of the characters.

I don't particularly care for the title and would doubt that it helped sell the movie but I guess the title of the book on which it's based, The Magnificent Bastards, wouldn't have cut it in 1956.  The 1953 book, by the way, is written by Lucy Herndon Crockett who was a Red Cross nurse during WWII.  

The good reverend's other scene, which comes right after the cemetery scene, is where he tries to free Lee from her self-righteousness and her extreme depression.  He tells her that Col. Black has indeed changed and it comes from his deep sorrow over how he last treated her.  (Another flaw of the movie is that we don't see his transformation... we only hear about it from the good reverend.)  

Black has been to battle since his last encounter with Lee and has come back with a brain injury, in which he can only whisper forgive me.  The reverend tells Lee she must learn forgiveness and perhaps eliminate her indignation over being wronged.  He alludes to another of the film's messages... war is hell.  People act in strange ways that they may never otherwise act. 

Here is a story about war without a single scene of combat.  That may have appealed to some viewers and not pleased others.  Kerr is the central character with Ritter having a major supporting role and since it is chiefly about Red Cross nurses and volunteers, it would not be wrong to call this a woman's picture.

I cannot say that I didn't enjoy Kerr as a governess or a nun or a spinster in other movies but the dark hues with which she painted some of her other characters made me sit up and pay greater attention.  In terms of the acting, I find The Proud and Profane to be one of the actress' best films.

She and Holden both said that the most enjoyable part of making this film was working with one another.  They hoped it would happen again but it never did.  It was actually filmed in the Virgin Islands which Kerr found to be the hottest, most humid, least enjoyable location of all her films.

Holden had signed a contract with the producing-directing team of William Perlberg and George Seaton in the 1950's.  He found being under contract to a studio distasteful and while he usually free-lanced, he would pick up three or four-picture contracts from time to time.  Seaton and Holden first worked together in 1948 on An Apartment for Peggy.  But after Perlberg and Seaton became partners, they signed Holden.  Together the threesome made The Country Girl and The Bridges of Toko-Ri in 1954, then this film and The Counterfeit Traitor in 1962.

Some of his female fans were likely disappointed with him not only because there was virtually nothing likable about his character (he carries around a stick... a la riding crop... he says as a trademark of my arrogance.  Female audience members were likely a little put off because his hair had been died black and he sported a mustache.  The pretty-boy looks were not in evidence.  The dark looks helped with the sinister characterization although I've wondered why he had to be an American Indian.  I think I want to take issue with that.  Nonetheless, Holden's performance was solid.  It is a role unlike any of his others.

This type of film needed a little bit of humor and light and it was supplied quite well by Ritter, one of the grand dames of character actresses.  Her Kate is tough, loving, strong and funny and I was real happy to meet her.

Martin had a good supporting role as a robust and wistful Marine who adores Lee and sets himself up as her protector as much as anything because she reminds him of his sister who died.  His attempt to later kill the colonel shows how far he would go.

So, okay, it's got a few flaws... they're not deal-breakers.  This is a good film, not a great one.  It does have a few things to say and it says them well.  It also has Kerr and Holden and Ritter and that is just some kind of wonderful.



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