The Saturday Night Movie Group watched “Foreign Correspondent” last night.
Summary: it is a damn good movie, though the radio broadcast ending probably went down more smoothly in 1940. Today, it seemed to me to be a bit over the top and somewhat laughable instead of patriotic (which I believe was the original intent). The original ending of the film involved “two of the characters discuss[ing] the events of the film on a transatlantic seaplane trip” but Hitch was expecting war, and called in Ben “The Front Page” Hecht to write that ending.
I never really thought of Hitchcock as being strong on special effects, but the practical effects work (especially the plane crash scene) is outstanding. And much of that is due to William Cameron Menzies, who previously did the burning of Atlanta for “Gone With the Wind”, another movie we watched just a few weeks ago.
The fun thing about “Foreign Correspondent” is that everywhere you look, there’s a rabbit hole to go down.
For example, the movie dialogue was written by James “Lost Horizon” Hilton and Robert Benchley. Benchley seems to be mostly forgotten now, but he was a major humorist and writer, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and even did a little acting. He plays “Stebbins” in the movie.
Laraine Day, who plays the love interest, was only 19 when the movie was shot. She went on to appear in “The High and the Mighty”, and in seven of the nine Lew Ayres “Dr. Kildare” films as his long suffering girlfriend/fiance. She missed the first one, “Young Dr. Kildare”, but appeared in all of them through the eighth, “Dr. Kildare’s Wedding Day”. The studio had other plans for her, so her character was…
She went on to marry, believe it or not, Leo Durocher (husband number two for her).
She was also a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a committed Republican, supporting Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.
My favorite rabbit hole, however, is George Sanders, who plays a major supporting role as “ffolliott”. He looks like a villain, but surprisingly turns out to be a decent guy (though I could never shake the feeling he wanted to steal Laraine Day away from Joel McCrea, and I would not have blamed him). I feel like I should have known a lot of this trivia already, but if I did look it up, I forgot it.
Saunders had an interesting career, including voicing Shere Khan in “The Jungle Book”, playing “Mr. Freeze” in a two-part “Batman” (1966) episode, and – the reason I should have known all this – he was “Addison DeWitt” in “All About Eve” (and won an Oscar for that role).
He was married four times. His second wife was Zsa Zsa Gabor: they were married for five years. Lawrence commented that’s about average for Zsa Zsa’s husbands, though she had some really short marriages later on, and Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt kind of skews the numbers.
His fourth wife was Magda Gabor, Zsa Zsa and Eva’s older sister. They were married for a month (December 5, 1970 – January 6, 1971).
Saunders was in poor health, suffered from dementia, lost a lot of money in failed investments, and had an on-again off-again relationship with a girlfriend the last four years of his life. He was deeply depressed.
So on April 23, 1972, he checked into a hotel, called a friend, swallowed five bottles of Nembutal, and died two days later. Quoting Lawrence again, when you swallow five bottles of Nembutal, you’re obviously pretty serious about checking out: this wasn’t any half-hearted “hope someone finds me” effort. Then again, given his described health problems, I can’t say I blame him. He was 65.
The Criterion blu-ray (affiliate link) is nice, and includes a documentary on the visual effects that’s just about the right length.