Sinclair Lewis's novel Cass Timberlane sold more than 1.2 million copies (and was serialized in Cosmopolitan) before being adapted for the screen by Oscar-winning scenarist Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story, Holiday, The Women, Love Affair). The 1947 movie was directed by George Sidney (who mostly made musicals that should have been better, such as Annie Get Your Gun, Pal Joey, Bye-bye Birdie) with MGM stars Spencer Tracy (in Father of the Bride mode, except playing the suitor) and Lana Turner (who had been sensational the year before in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"—in which she had another aged husband at the start...).

After establishing that Judge Timberlane (Tracy) is set in his ways, gruff by fairly tolerant, and allergic to cats, and that that bottle-blonde Virginia Marshland is a bit shy around her social "betters," the movie plunges quickly into implausibility, ex parte meetings by the judge with a witness (Ms. Marshland) in a case he is hearing. After flirting with her in chambers, he seeks her out in the less-than-reputable area in which she lives.

He finds her retrieving a softball on what might be the right side of the tracks, and then crosses them with her to umpire (behind the pitcher rather than behind the catcher). Ms. Marshland has a swing that seems exceedingly unlikely to produce a home-run. She (or, more likely, a double) slides into home-bases with some abandon and is called "Out!" by Umpire/Judge Timberlane. Then he takes her out to dinner, though he has a dinner engagement with the tuxedo-wearing gentry of the Minnesota city in which he lives.

The April/November romance is set up to show frictions of class. Maybe if the film had been made at Warner Brothers, this would have been central, but at genteel MGM, upper-class condescension to "uppity" beauties was not pursued with any enthusiasm. Instead, there is the pursuit of a younger man, a lawyer friend of the judge Bradd Criley (played by the oily Zachary Scott (fresh from betraying Joan Crawford's Mildred Pierce with her daughter), and the newly affluent Virginia Timberlane wishing to experience the Big Apple.

Between the Production Code, audience sentimentality, and the family value agenda of Louis B. Mayer, the straying wife is cut down, the betrayed husband rushes to her bedside, and is happy to take her back once she sees the foolishness of running away and running off with someone who would run away with her. . . There is no suspense at all. Tracy was phoning in one of his gruff but lovable performances. Turner was mildly interesting as a tomboy from the slums, but after being wooed and wed only can manage looking bored and being petulant. Mary Astor is totally wasted. The production values are high, but the story (Aging Man finds lively Girl, Girl gets bored and runs around, Girl returns to the comforts of life with Aging Man after running around and being disappointed in the Great World beyond) is devoid of inspiration and the cast just goes through the motions.

The cats give more nuanced performances than the human cast. Cat-lovers might find the proceedings more bearable than I, a dog-person, do. The kitties and cats are just too adorable for words...

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Although this soap opera probably had little of merit to adapt, Sinclair Lewis was better served by Hollywood adaptations than his fellow Minnesota native F. Scott Fitzgerald and the later Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway. At least the second half of Arrowsmith is interesting, and very good movies were made from Dodsworth and Elmer Gantry (there were silent and sound versions of Main Street and Babbitt, but I have not seen them).

The Minnesota/ans writeoff includes reviews of Elmer Gantry and (on Lewis's birthday will have my review of Dodsworth, and I would call attention again to the Black History Month relevance of the John Ford movie version of Arrowsmith. I have also written about another American Nobel laureate from my adopted state whose works were the basis for some very good movies: John Steinbeck.


Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age