My Romance with Movies: From the 1940s: The Secret Heart

1946 Drama

From Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Directed by Robert Z. Leonard

Starring

Claudette Colbert

Walter Pidgeon

June Allyson

Robert Sterling

Marshall Thompson

Patricia Medina

Richard Derr

Elizabeth Patterson

Lionel Barrymore

There are plenty of movies that, while good, are put over the top by the cast. In this case it's the two leads, Claudette Colbert and Walter Pidgeon. Both are such natural actors, appealing, genuine and accessible, creatures of silky elegance. I hadn't seen this little romance-family drama in some years and while I didn't remember every detail of it, I was all excited as it began because of these two.

Foremost in my memory was the farmhouse where most of the story takes place. I always remember it as a great place to hang out with family and friends, having a good time with fireside chats, laughter, singing/dancing, good food, games, etc. I wonder if the farmhouse set has been used before. It seems like I've seen it in several movies such as Bringing Up Baby and Christmas in Connecticut.

Colbert and Pidgeon meet on a cruise. She is returning to Rhode Island from a stay in England so that she can marry a musician (Richard Derr) who has become a banker. He has a young son and a daughter from a prior marriage who live with him. Pidgeon is the man's best friend who asks him to look up Colbert and keep her company.

Most unexpectedly the pair falls in love but she makes the decision to go through with her plans to marry Derr, not as much out of love but obligation to him because he needs a steady hand to watch over him. She also feels the children need her.

As it turns out Pidgeon has his own farmhouse just down the country road. One night the three of them are readying themselves to attend a party in the area when Derr, grumpy and contrary, decides to stay home but encourages Pidgeon and Colbert to go without him. She's reluctant to do that but Pidgeon is persuasive. While there they hear that Derr has died.

He jumped off a cliff near the house. The children are not told the truth. It seems their father had been caught embezzling from his bank. He had also spent many years regretting not following his dream of becoming a classical pianist.

Despite the fact that she'd now be free to marry Pidgeon after a period of bereavement, Colbert elects to move with the children to New York and away from the gossip which would surely result in the children learning the truth about their father. It's also important to her to pay off her husband's debts which she does by beginning a lucrative real estate career. She also makes the hard decision not to see Pidgeon any more, mainly because she wants to concentrate on the kids. It is clear she and Pidgeon still very much love one another.

An ideal couple

Ten years go by. The son, now played by Robert Sterling, has just gotten out of the Navy, and stops in at an office to see his girl, Patricia Medina, who is working as a secretary to Colbert. Much of Colbert's time is taken up dealing with her belligerent 17-year old stepdaughter, now played by June Allyson. In fact Colbert is on her way to visit Allyson's psychiatrist (Lionel Barrymore, in his one scene) to see what progress he thinks she's made. He says she's got big daddy issues and there's something unsettling about how the teenager is maturing. Nothing and no one seems to please her and she goes off the rails way too often.

The doctor almost alarms Colbert when he suggests that the family returns to the farmhouse which not only has it all over a Manhattan apartment but may be just what Allyson needs to shake her many demons.

Off they go. They are joined by Medina and Marshall Thompson, a friend of Sterling's, who takes an immediate but unrequited interest in Allyson. Sterling announces he has just gotten a job with Pidgeon who is now a ship builder. Colbert is intrigued.

While they are happy to be back in one another's lives, the couple agrees to take it one step at a time. One night the young ones are doing some dancing to records and Colbert and Pidgeon are invited to shake a leg. They do and become the center of attention. Everyone is having a good time until Allyson sweeps into the room, stops the record and tells Colbert to act her age and flounces off to her room. She even found fun an effort. Well!

The troubling June Allyson

What is wrong with this girl? Pidgeon agrees to keep an eye on her, maybe do some things together. Maybe she needs a father substitute. But the melodrama heats up at this point. Sterling has known for awhile the truth about his father and he decides to tell Allyson. At the same time he tells her that he hopes Colbert and Pidgeon marry because they obviously love one another. The bratty girl is doubly shocked.

Colbert and Pidgeon have been at his house for a few hours and he asks her to marry him. She's still not so sure that she should at that time but as they kiss, Allyson is seen watching them through the patio window. She rips off a bracelet Pidgeon has given her and drops it on the ground. When Colbert and Pidgeon find the bracelet, Colbert suddenly has a clear moment... she says Allyson is in love with Pidgeon. He's not so sure. We are.

Colbert feels that Allyson has headed to the bluff where her father killed himself. She arrives just as Allyson is about to hurl herself over the top. It seems touch and go for a spell but Colbert is able to say the right things. Ultimately Colbert is able to sit with Allyson and tell her everything about her father and Allyson (perhaps a little too pat) learns to accept Colbert and the way things had turned out. The final scene is at Allyson's high school graduation where she embraces Colbert and Pidgeon's relationship and tears down the barriers she constructed between her and the lovesick Thompson.

Sterling & Medina

Perhaps I had forgotten how enchanting Colbert's performance is. I shouldn't have. Watching this pro work with her infinite capacity to add little bits of business to her work was reinforced for me as I sat spellbound. She always seems to do or say or add just the right thing. I was captivated by her mother roles... always just the right touch, such emotional integrity. She seems to have forgotten the script as she speaks from her heart. And it's more astonishing when one considers the actress never had children.

I always had a preference for Colbert in dramas. Her appearance seems to lighten the load and she never misplaces her always-ready humor and kindness. When she made comedies for Frank Capra, Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch, I was on board but I thought she made a lot of mindless comedies. So I preferred her in dramas. Two back-to-back dramas she made, So Proudly We Hail and Since You Went Away, are at the top of my list.

No wonder Pidgeon supported so many of the big actresses of his day. He never got in their way and he could be a loving partner. Like Colbert, it was difficult to catch him acting. I thought he had one of the great voices.

The thing that is the most wrong with the film is Allyson. And probably the chief issue is that she was a 30-year old playing a 17-year old. Wearing teenage clothing, hair in pigtails and in her petulance stamping her foot was a little much. She was MGM's musical-comedy queen and very successful at it. The Secret Heart was actually her first drama and it showed. Throughout most of her career and discounting the number of biographies she appeared in, she did very little dramatic work.

The rest of the cast... Sterling, Thompson and Medina particularly... all did what they needed to do, which was mainly adding to the fun.

It's too bad Colbert and Pidgeon didn't work together again. They were so well-matched and full of promise. He would work with Allyson again in 1954's Executive Suite and he and Sterling guided The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in 1961.

Despite their struggles on screen, off screen Colbert and Allyson became the best of friends for the rest of their lives. Colbert became godmother to Allyson's daughter.

Technical credits are good. Music figures prominently and composer Bronislau Kaper's has put Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Chopin's Nocturne in DB to some very good use throughout the story. George Folsey's cinematography is exemplary... whether shooting Colbert's left-sided closeups or the outdoor sequences (especially the cliff) or inside the farmhouse. On the latter he is aided immeasurably by Edwin B. Willis's spot-on set decoration and the art direction of Cedric Gibbons and Edward Carfagno. I happily noticed Folsey's occasional forays into a film noir look.

It was said director Leonard was good at helming family films and temperamental stars. He had nothing to do with the latter on this film so he must have put everything into the other and it shows. The writing slips infrequently into soapy corn but I overlook it in lieu of all else to be taken in. Frankly, life occasionally slips into soapy corn, doesn't it? Oh, I don't mean your life but some of those you know.

Despite the sadness of parts of the story, this is really a most enjoyable movie and certainly speaks to the family dynamic in a most comforting way.

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