Customer Reviews

Primrose Path [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

it would have been easy for Ginger Rogers to overact, but she doesn't. She's in fact incredible as the poor daughter or a prostitute. She has her natural red hair back, but it's the same face if you look deep enough. She played this role without almost any make-up, and she looks very natural because of it. she meets Joel McCrea (another musical actor who, like Ginger makes the transtion to drama quite easily)when you think about it, their relationship is almost astaire-rogers like. First they meet, ginger rebuffs (he kisses her, she slaps him) then, they fall in love (they even get married) then a misunderstanding tears them apart, but they fall into each other's arms come the end credits. This movie is quite grown-up for 1940. (a notice came up before showing on TCM from 1940 that this movie was approved for adult audiences) there's nothing worse than kissing (quite a bit though) but the themes are adult. The chemistry between the two stars is wicked. when they lay under a boat he's painting, (he's practically on top of her) it's almost eerie how they fir together. Yes, it is serious, bur when Rogers smiles, she lights up the whole screen, and you can't help but love her. In case it gets too serious, afretwards, watch 42nd street (1933)(where Gin's at her wisecracking best) or carefree, shall we dance? or swingtime, where she's at her musical-comedy best. But don't forget to enjoy this film, because it's deffinately worthy.

The above quote is how this excellent melodrama starts, at it really sets the tone for the rest of the film. "Primrose Path" does a fantastic job of illustrating the lengths a person can be driven to out of sheer desperation. Ginger Rogers' acting in this film is hard to put into words. It's simply perfect. Her portrayal is at once completely natural, yet incredibly nuanced. Two scenes, in particular, when her husband leaves and when her mother dies, are excellent examples of acting at its best. Another of Rogers' films, "Kitty Foyle", released the same year, garnered more attention, mainly because it was a based on a hugely popular book, while "Primrose Path" was highly controversial. Personally, I think Rogers should have won the Oscar for this film, instead of "Kitty Foyle". I highly recommend "Primrose Path". However, be forewarned. While there is no outright violence or sex, this is not a family film, as it deals with very adult themes, such as poverty, alcoholism, and prostitution.

Excellent movie, lots of fun and has everything, love, romance, comedy nicely mixed with drama. Girl from wrong side of the tracks falls for boy from right side of tracks, love blooms and the fun begins during their stormy courtship, but destined romance and love affair. Ellie May's family adds just the right touch of a dysfunctional family that will make you laugh, but also touch your heart with sadness and your eye ducts with a tear or two. I highly recommend it, great fun with a stellar cast.

RKO Radio Pictures presents "PRIMROSE PATH" (1940) (93 min/B&W) -- Starring: Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry Travers, Miles Mander, Queenie Vassar, Joan Carroll, Vivienne Osborne, Carmen Morales

Directed by Gregory La Cava

Ginger Rogers and Joel McCrea did some of their best work in this film. The screenplay is a great one, and the direction is right on.

Joel McCrea's part is pretty typical but Ginger Rogers gets some tremendous lines and the supporting cast is surprisingly strong.

Ginger gives a great performance in Primrose Path, a good lead into what would be her Oscar winner with Kitty Foyle that same year.

Ellie May Adams (Ginger Rogers) lives on Primrose Hill with her good-hearted and fancy free mother, her drunken father, her younger sister and a mean-spirited grandmother. The Hill is not a good part of town, however. When she meets and falls for a hard-working man (Joel McCrea), they marry and she hides her past from him. When he discovers the truth it jeopardizes their marriage

The word "prostitute" is never mentioned (it would have given the 1940 censors apoplexy), but it was obvious anyway. Still, the film was banned in Detroit, and the play was modified to placate those censors. Queenie Vassar was primarily a stage actress; this was her first film.

Oscar Nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Marjorie Rambeau)

BIOS:
1. Gregory La Cava [aka: George Gregory La Cava] (Director)
Date of Birth: 10 March 1892 - Towanda, Pennsylvania
Date of Death: 1 March 1952 - Malibu, California

2. Ginger Rogers (aka: Virginia Katherine McMath)
Date of Birth: 16 July 1911 - Independence, Missouri
Date of Death: 25 April 1995 - Rancho Mirage, California

3. Joel McCrea
Date of Birth: 5 November 1905 - South Pasadena, California
Date of Death: 20 October 1990 - Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California

4. Marjorie Rambeau
Date of Birth: 15 July 1889 - San Francisco, California
Date of Death: 6 July 1970- Palm Springs, California

Mr. Jim's Ratings:
Quality of Picture & Sound: 4 Stars
Performance: 5 Stars
Story & Screenplay: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars [Original Music, Cinematography & Film Editing]

Total Time: 93 min on DVD ~ RKO Radio Pictures ~ (April 4, 2011)

Primrose Path is based on the pot boiler book February Hill and despite the censorship of the time the movie does a good job of getting most of the book to the screen. Ginger plays Ellie May the daughter of a free lance prostitute who spends wild weekends in the city with well to do men for a fee. Dad is an educated man who married beneath himself and although he loves his wife and his kids he's such a hopeless drunk Ellie can't expect any help from him. Granny is an old mean and unrepentant prostitute who can't wait to for the beautiful Ellie to go into the family business.

Salvation comes in the form of Joel McCray who plays an honest decent young man who marries Ellie. He's disgusted by her family but in the end he decides to deal with it. He puts the old hag granny in her place, cleans up the household and rescues Ellie's younger sister (there were 3 sisters in the book)from the family shack and lives happily ever after with Ellie.

It's a pretty good movie and McCray and Rogers have so much chemistry they're practically sizzling on screen. Check it out.

'Primrose Path' could have been dire, another stodgy adaptation of a dated American play. The work's hokey theatrical origins are betrayed not only in the interior settings (the story has three basic locations, a run-down frame house, a steakhouse and a dodgy nightclub), whose apparent seediness is conveyed with all the grimy grandeur Hollywood could muster; but in the reliance on reams of bogus-realistic dialogue, and sub-Eugene O'Neill character-contrivances, such as the family patriarch, a classics scholar turned alcoholic. In order to feed the family - two daughters, an anti-Shirley Temple brat and a supposedly teenage Ginger Rogers, as well as her mother, a grotesque, compelling embodiment of pantomime moral corruption - the mother works as a prostitute. It's not clear whether this has caused her husband's alcoholism, or is the practical solution to it. Persuaded by her self-pitying father to leave, Rogers throws herself on local lothario Joel McCrea, feigining suicidal tendencies and invoking a desperate home life. Their marriage is enviably happy until a chance meeting with Mother at their place of work initiates a cycle of tragic events. This heavy atmosphere of impending, deterministic doom is another cliche of the contemporary American stage.

That 'Path' isn't awful - that it's actually a very enjoyable piece of melodrama - is due entirely to the director and his actors. Gregory le Cava's most famous films are the screwball comedy 'My Man Godfrey', about a vagrant who is made a socialite's butler, and' Stage Door', an all-female backstage drama. He brings to 'Path' a rare feeling for class and a Cukor-like empathy with female relationships that raise his material to the poignant, rescuing and humanising in particular the mother-figure, poised dangerously between whore and saint. He also has a canny ability to root out the comedy from the mawkish weeds.

The actors, meanwhile, breathe life into stilted constructions - Rogers was one of the few actressses who knew how to convey the process of falling and being in love: her emotional upheavals here make for wrenching viewing; McCrea is just right as the motherless ladies' man who needs to settle down, but can't cope with any kind of betrayal; Joan Carroll is a rare Hollywood child who is pure, unsentimental horror; and Queenie Vassar as the grandmother is deliciously, manipulatively vile.

I did not get the appeal of this movie. I was expecting something light and fun like My Man Godfrey and 5th Avenue Girl (other films made by Gregory La Cava). But this movie was depressing and confusing. I still don't understand why the characters became so upset with each other about lying about their situation and why her stealing problem wasn't a problem. It was confusing with misdirected motivations.