There Goes My Girl (and Nine Other Great Reporter Films)
Jul 17 '01
The Bottom Line There Goes My Girl fails whenever it tries to be funny (particularly with its contrived conclusion), but it succeeds with its wit and on the soundness of its message.
Ever since the 70s--ever since feminism became a movement rather than a respectable and responsible state of mind--the most vocal feminists have seemed to be more interested in asserting equality between the sexes than in allowing the sexes to be equal. Social debates were handled differently in the 30s. Hollywood knew how to portray women as strong, independent and attractive without having Alan Alda appear in a cameo to say to the audience, "Hey, have you guys noticed how strong, independent, and attractive that woman is?"
Because 1937's There Goes My Girl was written by two men (George Beck and Harry Segall), some might call its unabashed feminist slant a male fantasy of feminism. And maybe it is just such a fantasy. But if so, I'd like to know just what's so objectionable about the fantasy of a smart, tough woman who takes care of herself and turns out to be more interested in her job as a reporter than in raising a passel of kids.
Connie Taylor (Ann Sothern) is an ace reporter who is engaged to marry Jerry Martin (Gene Raymond), another reporter who works for a rival newspaper. Their story begins on a trajectory that we would have to categorize as traditional. It is understood that when Connie marries Jerry, she will quit her job and become a homemaker while Jerry continues his work in the field that they both love: reporting. But the traditional trajectory turns out not to be such a fit with Connie Taylor when a seeming murder is committed at her wedding ceremony. She bolts from the altar in pursuit of the murderer (and a headline), leaving Jerry to sputter about what a terrible wife she would make.
The best scene in the film takes place in a diner, with Connie in her wedding dress and Jerry in his tuxedo. Precisely like reporters who are discussing a story (instead of lovers having a quarrel), they both reflexively order ham sandwiches and coffee and proceed to discuss the propriety of Connie's decision to abandon her own wedding in order to pursue a murder story. That scene alone is worth putting up with the many contrived plot twists and flat lines of dialogue that mar this fascinating exploration of what men and women are entitled to expect from one another in a modern world.
When Jerry finally decides to break off his relationship with Connie, he says, "A fine mother you'd make. The moment you got wind of a burning building or a murder, you'd drop our kids on their heads to go chasing after a byline. Well, no thanks!"
What Jerry fails to realize at this point in the film is that he is so attracted to Connie precisely because he is exactly right about her. She would rather give birth to news stories than to babies. And frankly, so would he. This metaphor is worked out with precision later in the film, but first our story has to show us how Jerry's inadequacies as a 'traditional' husband match up with Connie's inadequacies as a wife and mother.
In an effort to win Jerry back, Connie follows him to a small town where he is investigating a murder. Predictably, her instincts as a reporter take over, and she quickly loses sight of her romantic objective, opting instead to try to scoop Jerry on the story. While snooping around for leads, she stumbles upon Grace Andrews (Marla Shelton), who has just been shot. Grace is a traditional woman. She wears lots of frilly clothes, including a fur collar that is actually higher that her own head. She tries to manipulate the men in her life instead of confronting them directly. And when she gets shot, she falls to the floor in a heap and expires the way women are supposed to expire when they are shot.
Fascinatingly, when Jerry charges through the door to discover Connie in the same room as a freshly made corpse, he doesn't ask, "Are you all right?" He doesn't check to make sure that the murderer is gone. He doesn't draw the blinds or lock the doors. He merely starts looking for clues and traps Connie into calling the police to report the murder so that he can get a head start on tracking down the murderer. He doesn't act like a husband at all. He is far more interested in beating her to the story than in protecting her. And if we think of a man as being obliged to keep 'his' woman (in all her helpless fragility) out of danger, then it is Jerry's fault that Connie herself is shot as soon as he leaves the room.
But was Jerry really at fault? In treating Connie precisely like the rival reporter that she is, he treated her with a kind of love that is perhaps only possible when we put our notions of gender roles behind us. He treated her like a competent, self-reliant professional.
He treated her, in other words, like an equal.
And clearly, Connie deserves to be treated like an equal. She doesn't stammer and weep after being shot like some phony heroine from a Spielberg film. She remains calm and tries to be helpful to the police while waiting for the amublance. She doesn't blubber or whine or so much as go into shock. She reacts to the bullet wound not like a 'woman,' but like a person who wants to live.
Once Jerry realizes what a rare and beautiful person Connie is, he begins to act out of a love that asserts itself as more important to him than his love for his own profession. He puts the story together on Connie's behalf and submits it to her editor under her name. When he goes to the hospital to check on her, it is profoundly significant that he walks past the maternity ward on the way to Connie's room. He hears a newborn screaming and sees a new father beaming with pride. He claps the man on the back and offers his sincere congratulations.
That stranger doesn't understand it, but in Jerry's own mind, the two men have a great deal in common. The stranger in the maternity ward has just become a father in the 'traditional' sense. But Jerry has become a father as well, the father of the story that he put together with Connie (thanks in large part to the seed of the story that she was able to offer him during the ride to the hospital). And since Connie was confined to a hospital bed, Jerry was the one who went through the actual labor of tracking down all the necessary details and actually producing the final draft. When he submits the story that he has labored on under her name, it is a precise counterpart for the 'traditional' way in which children tend to be named after their fathers even though their mothers are the ones who labor to bring them forth.
There Goes My Girl fails whenever it tries to be funny (particularly with its contrived conclusion), but it succeeds with its wit and on the soundness of its message. And when it's over, we're left with the understanding that the 'My' in the title doesn't appear to refer to any of the male figures that we're likely to guess. Jerry tries to think of Connie as his girl. Connie's editor tries to think of her as his girl as well. But while they're busy fighting over her, she's busy belonging to her profession, her craft, her art. And isn't that the best that any of us--male or female--can hope for?
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Because this film is unlisted in the epinions database, I have opted to include my review of it here. As a way of legitimizing my contribution, I would like to produce a 'ten best list' of 'reporter' movies. And I would do so if eplovejoy's contribution to this category weren't so exhaustive and compelling as to make such a list completely superfluous.
Instead, I'll direct you to eplovejoy's review, which can be found here: http://www.epinions.com/content_1128571012/tk_~CB0011.1.1
And for the sake of form, I'll list nine of my favorite reporter movies in no particular order:
His Girl Friday and The Front Page both have a great deal in common with There Goes My Girl.
Other great movies with reporters as important characters include The Sweet Smell of Success, Libeled Lady, All the President's Men, The Philadelphia Story, It Happened One Night, The Killing Fields, and Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.
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Member: Mike Davis
Location: Philadelphia
Reviews written: 199
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Read my reviews in order to heal the sick and control the weather. Seriously.
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