For those of you who have never seen any of the Oscar-winning actress’ movies from her peak years during World War Two, you don’t know what you’re missing. For those of you who have had the pleasure of catching the classics Mrs. Miniver, Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Mrs. Parkington, you know what I’m talking about when I say that Garson had one of those faces (and mouths) that defined glamour during Hollywood’s most glamorous era.
And that’s not just lip service.
Garson’s face had a pearly luminescence that seemed to provide its own light source on the screen. The fact that there always seemed to be a smile trembling at the outer edge of her mouth didn’t hurt, either. Garson had a way of looking at co-stars like Robert Donat, Errol Flynn and—most especially—Walter Pidgeon which said, “You’re the dearest man in the world and I’m hanging on to every word you say.” With her arched eyebrow and half-parted mouth, she could bring men (at least this man) to a swoony tremble.
But the real reason I plug films like Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest into the VCR is to watch, over and over again, that lower lip of hers. Sure, there have been plenty of famous movie lips down through the ages—Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Sophia Loren, Edward G. Robinson—but nothing can compare to Garson’s lower lip which looks like it’s been numbed with novocain and juts forward as if preparing for a smooch. In scenes where her co-stars move in for a kiss, I simply lose all control. There are times when I have to put the videotape on pause while I get up to walk around the room to cool off.
Greer Garson’s lip can keep me going through even the sappiest of Hollywood’s war-years dramas—a genre at which she excelled. In Mrs. Miniver (1942), she was at the peak of her craft, playing a staunch British housewife who wasn’t about to let a German blitz ruin her family’s homelife. She embodied everything brave and good about humanity.
In Random Harvest, released the same year as Mrs. Miniver, she plays a similar role as a Good Samaritan who nurses a shell-shocked Ronald Colman back to the land of coherence. Interestingly enough, the movie is based on the novel by James Hilton who wrote Goodbye Mr. Chips (Garson’s big-screen debut) and Lost Horizon (Colman’s big starring role five years earlier). Here, the two actors and the author converge in a relatively satisfying Big Drama which audiences lapped up like sweetened condensed milk in the 1940s. (Heck, I’ve been known to do my share of lapping even today, I suppose.)
As the film opens, Colman is in an asylum filled with veterans of World War One. These soldiers have survived the trench warfare, but their minds and souls have been blown to bits. Colman, in one of his best performances, plays John Smith, so-named by the hospital staff since he can’t remember his name or anything about his past. In fact, he’s just one brain cell above catatonic, giving doctors a vacant stare and stuttering over the simplest phrases (his favorite is “I’m all right. Really.”).
These early scenes are a harrowing and realistic look at combat fatigue—something which 1942 audiences were becoming increasingly familiar with. The beginning of Random Harvest is also a tribute to director Mervyn LeRoy’s (I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang) ability to keep the story moving briskly through an incredible amount of emotional backstory in a short amount of time. We learn a lot about Smith’s character in just a few short scenes.
One night, when the end of war is announced and the asylum guards are out celebrating in the streets with everyone else, Smith strolls out the front gates unnoticed. He ends up in a tobacconist’s shop where he meets Paula (Garson) and her sweet, luminous lower lip. Taking pity on the stumbling, stuttering man, Paula brings him back to her boarding house where she lives with the rest of the performers in her vaudeville touring troupe. She tenderly nurses him back to mental health and soon “Smitty” is able to form complete sentences (though there’s still a distant, baffled look in his eyes).
Because this is a product of the 1940s Hollywood Dream Factory, the two soon fall in love, get married, move to a quaint country cottage and have a child—all in 30 minutes or less. And, because this is Hollywood at its most entertaining, soap-a-riffic fluff, there are plot twists, tragedies and enough scenes of heartbreak to make the film stock go all gooey.
I’m not about to spoil any of the wonderful pleasures of Random Harvest, so I’ll just leave it at this: if you’ve seen Casablanca, To Each His Own, A Letter to Three Wives or Now, Voyager, then you’ll know what to expect as the violins swell and the dewy close-ups get even dewier.
Random Harvest does build to a cathartic climax which is profoundly satisfying. It’s no Bogie and Bergman at the airport, but it’ll do for a decent heart-plucker. The only trouble is, that build-up builds too slowly. After the nifty network of plot twists and chance-meetings, the story starts to meander and you feel every one of the movie’s 125 minutes. The early promise of LeRoy’s crisp pace turns to a soggy trot as the players head down the finishing stretch. This, no doubt, is due to the movie’s earnest faithfulness to Hilton’s novel.
Still, there’s that shimmering glow from Greer Garson’s lower lip and that, ladies and gentlemen, is enough to keep me glued to even the longest soap opera.
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