Kings Row

Plot

The film commences in 1890 in the small midwestern town of Kings Row, focusing on five children. They are 1) Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings), who lives with his grandmother; 2) Cassandra Tower (Betty Field), daughter of Dr. Alexander Tower (Claude Rains); 3) the wealthy and fun-loving orphan Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan); 4) Louise Gordon (Nancy Coleman), daughter of the sadistic town physician Dr. Henry Gordon (Charles Coburn), who has been known to perform operations without anesthetic; and 5) the tomboy Randy Monaghan (Ann Sheridan), whose father is a railroad worker.

Parris is attracted to Cassandra, whom the other children avoid because her family is "strange": her mother is confined to the house and never seen. Dr. Tower takes Cassie out of school; she is confined at home and Parris does not see her again until years later, when he begins his medical studies under Dr. Tower's tutelage.

Parris' best friend, Drake, intends to marry Louise despite the disapproval of her father. Louise, however, refuses to defy her parents and will not marry him. Parris and Cassie begin a secret romance, seeing each other at Drake's house. At about this time, Parris' grandmother becomes ill from terminal cancer and dies as he is about to go overseas to Vienna for medical school. Parris, who decides to study psychiatry, proposes marriage to Cassie. She initially resists, running away, but later comes begging him to take her with him to Vienna. She then runs away again, back home.

The next day, Parris learns that Dr. Tower has poisoned Cassie and shot himself, and has left his estate to him. He learns from Dr. Tower's notebook that he killed Cassie because he believed he saw early signs that she might go insane like her mother, and he wanted to prevent Parris from ruining his life by marrying her, just as Tower's life had been ruined by marrying Cassie's mother.

While Parris is in Vienna, Drake's trust fund is stolen by a dishonest bank official. Drake is forced to work locally for the railroad, and his legs are injured in a boxcar accident. Dr. Gordon amputates both of his legs. Drake, who had been courting Randy before the accident, marries her but is now embittered by the loss of his legs and refuses to leave his bed. Nonetheless they commence a business, begun with Parris' financial help, building houses for working families. When Parris suggests they move into one of the homes they've built, away from the railroad tracks and sounds of the trains that plague Drake, he becomes hysterical and makes Randy swear to never make him leave the room.

Parris returns from Vienna to Kings Row and decides to remain there, when he learns that Dr. Gordon has died, leaving the town with no doctor. Louise reveals that her father amputated Drake's legs unnecessarily, because he hated Drake and thought it was his duty to punish wickedness. Parris at first wishes to withhold the truth from Drake, fearing it will destroy his fragile recovery. He considers confining Louise to a mental institution, even though she is not insane, to prevent the truth from being revealed to Drake and other victims of her father. But instead, persuaded by his new friend Elise (Kaaren Verne) to treat Drake like any other patient rather than his best friend, he tells Drake what happened. Drake reacts with defiance and summons a renewed will to live instead of the deep clinical depression Parris had feared. Parris is now free to marry Elise, having helped his old friend return to a productive life.

Cast

Kings Row and the Hays Code

A film adaptation of Bellamann's controversial novel, modeled on his home town of Fulton, Missouri, presented significant problems for movie industry censors, who sought to bring the film into conformity with the Hays Code. Screenwriter Casey Robinson believed the project was hopeless because of the Hays Code. Producer Hal B. Wallis said that Robinson felt "I was crazy to have bought so downbeat a property." Wallis urged him to reconsider, and it occurred to Robinson that he could turn this into the story of "an idealistic young doctor challenged by the realities of a cruel and horrifying world."

Joseph Breen, director of the Production Code Authority, which administered the Hays Code, wrote the producers that "To attempt to translate such a story to the screen, even though it be re-written to conform to the provisions of the Production Code is, in our judgment, a very questionable undertaking from the standpoint of the good and welfare of this industry."

Breen objected to "illicit sexual relationships" between characters in the movie "without sufficient compensating moral values", and also objected to "the general suggestion of loose sex...which carries throughout the entire script." Breen also voiced concern about the characterization of Cassandra, who is a victim of incest with her father in the novel, as well as the mercy killing of the grandmother by Parris also depicted in the novel, and "the sadistic characterization of Dr. Gordon."

Breen said that any screenplay, no matter how well done, would likely bring condemnation of the film industry "from decent people everywhere" because of "the fact that it stems from so thoroughly questionable a novel. He said that the script was being referred to his superior, Will Hays, "for a decision as to the acceptability of any production based upon the novel, Kings Row."

Robinson, Wallis and associate producer David Lewis met with Breen to resolve these issues, with Wallis saying that the film would "illustrate how a doctor could relieve the internal destruction of a stricken community." Breen said that his office would approve the film if all references to incest, nymphomania, euthanasia and homosexuality, which had been suggested in the novel, be removed. All references to nude bathing were to be eliminated and "the suggestion of a sex affair between Randy and Drake will be eliminated entirely." It was agreed that Dr. Tower would know about the affair between Cassandra and Parris, and "that this had something to do with his killing of the girl."

After several drafts were rejected, Robinson was able to satisfy Breen.

Themes

Bellaman, a professor at Vassar College, was a disciple of Honoré de Balzac, and his novel was in the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio and was a forerunner of the popular 1950s novel Peyton Place.

The film begins with a billboard promoting Kings Row as "A Good Town. A Good Clean Town. A Good Town to Live In and a Good Place to Raise Your Children." In his book City of Nets, author Otto Friedrich says that beneath the tranquil small town exterior was a "roiling inferno of fraud, corruption, treachery, hypocrisy, class warfare, and ill-suppressed sex of all varieties: adultery, sadism, homosexuality, incest."

The film is a eulogy for American small town life in the Victorian era. At one point a character laments at seeing Parris' grandmother getting older: "A whole way of life. A way of gentleness and honor and dignity. These things are going... and they may never come back to this world."

Musical score

The film's musical score, by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was so popular with the public that the Warner Brothers Music Department drafted a form-letter response to queries concerning recordings or sheet music. At the time, film scores for movie dramas were not published or recorded for commercial distribution.

A soundtrack was not commercially available until 1979, when Chalfont Records, with the composer's son George Korngold as producer and an orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt, made an early digital recording. Subsequently, the original soundtrack, with the composer conducting, has been released from an optical recording.

Kings Row is considered one of Korngold's most notable compositions. The original orchestral score was requested by the White House for the inauguration of President Reagan. Prolific film composer John Williams drew inspiration from this film's soundtrack for his famous Star Wars opening theme.

Prior to release of the film, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that Bellaman "heads west to help Erich Wolfgang Korngold on the scoring" of the film, and that Bellaman used to be on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. This led Korngold to write a sarcastic letter to the head of studio publicity at Warner Brothers, saying, "seriously, should I really stop working and wait for the arrival of Mr. Bellaman? ... However, if he shouldn't arrive in time to help me, I shall certainly be ready to 'head east'—perhaps I could help him in writing his new book!"

Box office

According to Variety the film earned $2,350,000 in rentals in the US in 1942.

Critical reaction

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther panned Kings Row, which he described as being as "gloomy and ponderous" as the novel upon which it was based. "Just why the Warners attempted a picture of this sort in these times, and just why the corps of high-priced artists which they employed for it did such a bungling job," Crowther wrote, "are questions which they are probably mulling more anxiously than any one else." Crowther said that the film "turgidly unfolds on the screen," and is "one of the bulkiest blunders to come out of Hollywood in some time." The performances, particularly Cummings', were, he said, "totally lacking in conviction." The film, he said, "just shows a lot of people feeling bad."

Later reviewers have viewed the movie favorably, however, and the film received a 100% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, a film-review aggregator.

Time Out Film Guide described the film as "one of the great melodramas" and "as compulsive and perverse as any election, a veritable Mount Rushmore of emotional and physical cripples, including a surgeon with a penchant for unnecessary amputations, a girl who 'made friends on one side of the tracks and made love on the other'."

TV Guide said that Kings Row was "one of the most memorable melodramas of its day," in that it portrayed "a small town not with the poignancy and little joys of Thorton Wilder's Our Town, but rather in grim, often tragic tones." The magazine described the film as "one of director Wood's finest films," and praised Robinson's screenplay, "even if he cut out a death from cancer, deleted a mercy killing, and toned down the narrative's homosexual angle." It described Korngold's score as "haunting" and the sets "quite stunning." James Wong Howe's "gorgeous cinematography, meanwhile, maintains in deep focus many layers of drama, as befits this brooding tapestry."

Awards and honors

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (James Wong Howe), Best Director and Best Picture.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

Television series

The film was adapted into a 1955 television series, with Jack Kelly (who later portrayed Bart Maverick in Maverick) in Cummings' role and Robert Horton (who subsequently played scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train) performing Reagan's part. The show appeared as one of three rotating series on the earliest William T. Orr production, Warner Bros. Presents. The other two series were Casablanca, another TV version of a renowned movie (featuring Charles McGraw in Humphrey Bogart's role), and Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker, a Western later produced by Roy Huggins that went on to its own time slot for several years until it started rotating with Bronco, another Warner Bros. Western. At the conclusion of each episode of Warner Bros. Presents, host Gig Young would interview a different actor from a new Warner Bros. movie about the studio's latest theatrical release. Kings Row ran for seven episodes.