There's Always Tomorrow

Fourth and final pairing of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. It's a midlife crisis soaper from director Douglas Sirk about a man (MacMurray) who feels neglected by his wife (Joan Bennett) and kids. When he meets old flame Stanwyck, sparks fly. When his kids find out, it naturally causes problems. Well-directed with some nice photography from Russell Metty. The visuals help make a routine story a little more interesting. But still, it's just that: routine. This is not the kind of movie that I would watch more than once. The performances are all fine but I just found it rather dull. Still, Stanwyck and MacMurray fans will want to check it out.

Pasadena toy manufacturer Fred MacMurray (as Clifford "Cliff" Groves) is wealthy and successful, but feels neglected by his busy family. His children are preoccupied with their own lives and loving wife Joan Bennett (as Marion) always finds herself committed to something other than time with Mr. MacMurray. He feels ignored, unappreciated and lonely. Enter former employee Barbara Stanwyck (as Norma Miller-Vale). Formerly plain, but now an attractive dress designer, Ms. Stanwyck arrives in Los Angeles on business. She's clearly interested in rekindling something with MacMurray... The best part here is that "There's Always Tomorrow" has director Douglas Sirk working in the 1950s, with his best photographer Russell Metty. This means artful shadows, stairways, windows and reflections. Such visuals, especially as they complement the story, are great. There is even a scene with Stanwyck's face shedding tears that are actually reflected raindrops; a technique said to have originated with "In Cold Blood" (1967). Quite possibly, this was done even earlier... The cast is strangely unimpassioned. MacMurray and Stanwyck lack the level of spark they conveyed in previous collaborations. Perhaps this is the point. MacMurray has become like the toy robot he created. He's "Rex" the walkie-talkie mechanical man. Stanwyck appears to be hesitating an attempted seduction. While not the protagonist, she becomes the most interesting character. Completely and most maddeningly in the dark, Ms. Bennett acts robotically unaware of the threat to her supposedly perfect family life. Shaking things up is suspicious and literate son William Reynolds (as Vinnie). ******* There's Always Tomorrow (1/20/56) Douglas Sirk ~ Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, William Reynolds

In her review, at the time on the top of this movie's reviews, lora64 says: "As for first impressions, I have the feeling it's an idealist's wished-for 'dream of a perfect world and perfect people' that never quite comes true, unfortunately, for many in real life. " I think my dearest lora64 misunderstood the film. ANd I think many people misunderstands it. Because the one thing important nobody seems to see. I mean the robot. Unlike conservative Noel Coward's "Brief Encunter",this is the story of a little talking robot living a little idiotic life with his little idiotic family, as he LONGS for escape. Just see the many takes of the robot walking towards the camera. Douglas Sirk was trying to say something there. This film is bitterness and acidity combined in such a masterful way, and finely enough that a lot of people still think they're watching a 'dream of a perfect world and perfect people'.

SYNOPSIS: Fred MacMurray does his best to compel audience sympathy while he is torn between the homey security offered by Joan Bennett and the more colorfully vampish allure of Barbara Stanwyck. COMMENT: Here's a movie that captured little more than moderate interest from connoisseurs, critics and fans on its original release, but was elevated to cult status in the 1960s. Admittedly, it's beautifully dressed (albeit in black-and-white), and its lush Ross Hunter assets are effectively put across by director Sirk and photographer Metty in long, fluid takes. But aside from this gorgeous mounting, the movie offers hardly a single redeeming feature. The script is dime-store True Romance, while the acting follows the finest traditions of genteel soap opera. All the dialogue is neatly mouthed with just the right amount of synthetic facial quivering that does little to disturb the actors' impeccable make-up and grooming. These characters are not real people but artificial poseurs in a synthetic world of high-hat romance. Frankly, "There's Always Tomorrow" is the sort of yesterday's picture that gives 1950s' Hollywood a bad name. True, for sold-out fans of its three stars , the movie offers predictable entertainment. And it's always a pleasure to see Pat Crowley, Myrna Hansen and Jane Darwell. But an auteur masterpiece, it is most definitely not!

Yet another impressive Douglas Sirk melodrama centring on the contemporary American family and in this particular film the American husband / father figure. Most of the Sirk movies I've seen seem to put women at the heart of the action but here the emotional crisis is thrust upon Fred MacMurray's toy salesman, a conventional, dutiful husband and father to his three growing children, one boy on the verge of adulthood, one daughter in her late teen, mildly rebellious years and another somewhat childish younger teenager. His wife, played by Joan Bennett, seems preoccupied with the needs and wants of these rather selfish children to the point where she seems ignorant of the effect the cumulative family disinterest is having on his emotional needs. Just as he's feeling especially insignificant along comes old flame Barbara Stanwyck in her third fine film with MacMurray to fan the sparks of his mid-life crisis into a full-blown blazing passion, to the extent where he has a secret if accidental weekend away with her and quickly comes to contemplate leaving his family for a life of excitement with her. Which way will he turn and what part will his two mortified older children, who in typical Sirkian grand coincidental fashion, learn of his plans, play in his final decision? Once again, Sirk brings family members to a crisis-point and even if the resolution this time takes a conventional course, still there's real drama in these excellently crafted and written scenes of anything but cosy domesticity. Cynics may make sneering remarks about all this amounting to shallow soap operatics but I think they would be wrong. Post-War Western and especially American society was evolving even against the "I Like Ike" background of greater personal wealth and the growth in consumerism but just under the surface it wasn't all sweetness and light and Sirk was one director who caught that change in attitudes in his mid-50's work. Once again MacMurray surprised me with the depth and roundedness of his performance as a middle-aged man cornered by society's expectations of him while Stanwyck in one of her last major roles before she, like MacMurray a bit later, turned to TV, is as good as she usually is as the unwitting Eve in Fred's supposed Garden of Eden. Her character of a flamboyant, self-confident, but importantly unmarried career-woman is equally worthy of deeper investigation as MacMurray's worm-turning Mr Suburbia. Lesser known than other Sirk dramas of the decade it's as good as any of them in my opinion and well worth watching.

I can not stand Vinny's character. He is so "full of himself." The youngest daughter Frankie drove me crazy with her whining! Excellent performances by Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Bennett. This is one of the last movies Stanwyck and MacMurray made together, she was as beautiful in this movie as in any of her 1940's movies. She's timeless and such a wonderful actress. For those of you who really like Fred, and want a real treat... Check out the movies "Miracle of the Bells," and "Suddenly it's Spring!" Fred Mac Murray and Barbara Stanwyck were such underrated actors/actresses of their time. Joan Bennett plays her part so well you understand why the household is the way it is. Great love story, if you can get through the kids!

So much for that well-known 'woman's intuition'; we, the audience, can see inside reel #1 that Fred McMurray is disappointed in his domestic life which consists of self-centered children and a wife who indulges them even if it means neglecting the husband/bread-winner yet the wife in question, Joan Bennett is serenely oblivious to what amount to McMurray's cries for help. He is portrayed as a husband to die for, thoughtfully preparing a surprise for his wife's birthday which is more or less thrown in his face because the selfish needs of the children come first. McMurray is a toy manufacturer and Sirk gets lots of mileage out of the metaphor; McMurray toys with the idea of leaving wife and family, as does the 'other woman', Norma Vale (Barbara Stanwyck), who turns up out of the blue and past respectively just when McMurray is at his most vulnerable yet ultimately Norma merely toys with his feelings. It's difficult to believe that Sirk made this soft-hitting soap back-to-back with the hard hitting Written On The Wind and it is perhaps understandable that this one got lost in the shuffle. Like McMurray it has been unfairly neglected and is well worth seeking out.

In this Douglas Sirk-directed sudser, Fred MacMurray plays a toy manufactorer who becomes tired of his routine homelife and falls into the waiting arms of Stanwyck, his lover from 20 years earlier. MacMurray's son (William Reynolds) eventually becomes suspicious of his dad's whereabouts and snoops around to find out exactly what is going on. And MacMurray's unintentionally neglectful wife (Joan Bennett) is completely oblivious to her husband's attraction to Stanwyck, as the flashy New York City designer. "There's Always Tomorrow" is an interesting film in that it examines the dark-side of the 1950s nuclear family....something that Sirk had always been interested in. Stanwyck and MacMurray have an undeniable chemistry that is given new life after their 1946 classic "Double Indemnity". The performances shine, and many of the scenes are given classic Sirk touches (such as the reflection of the rain streaming down the window on Stanwyck's face, after her showdown with MacMurray's children). However, this movie adds nothing new to the routine formula, of the tempting female disrupting the lives of a happy family. Good overall, but it lacks a certain punch.

Virtually unknown among Sirk's catalog, which is reasonably when you consider his classic films like 'All That Heaven Allows' and 'Imitation of Life.' But for a film this good to have not seen a DVD release is criminal. I had the good fortune of being able to see this gem at a public screening this week. This is easily one of the best films to come out of the studio era. The film concerns Clifford Grove (Fred MacMurray) a toy developer, whose family neglects him. His wife bails out on their plans constantly, for the children, and the children pay no attention to their loving father. Clifford runs into an old flame, who is back in town and begins to innocently spend some time with her while she's in town. But his sneaky children become suspicious of his activities and start to follow him, his son begins to convince his siblings that their father is having in affair. Their begin to psychological torment their father and ultimately drive him to desire leaving his family. It's painfully dark, and Fred MacMurray is brilliant. The psychological effect on the viewer is tremendous. It's dark and hopeless. If children were shown this on the advent of puberty, no one would ever get married. The stark black and white cinematography is always telling more than the story, with sneaky, sweeping pans and dollies the film keeps you guessing the duration. It's the kind of backhanded studio film, that was rarely produced, where the director gives the audience only ambiguities for resolution, cyclical images void of hope for Clifford, but ambiguous enough to get by censors at the studio, enough to imply that maybe things turned out for old Clifford. This is studio-era cinema at it's best. If you get a chance to catch a screening of it on the new 35mm that is, supposedly, circulating art-house cinemas around the U.S., go. It's a shame that it is not more widely available, a radiant film from the 50s (though troubled and moderately sexist, symptomatic of the time period, but not so blatant that it can't be overlooked in the same way that critics can overlook the racism in 'Birth of a Nation').

Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Joan Bennett star in "There's Always Tomorrow," directed by Douglas Sirk and featuring William Reynolds, Gigi Perreau, Judy Nugent, and Pat Crowley as the young people. MacMurray is a successful toy developer, Clifford Groves, married to Marion (Bennett), and they have three children (Reynolds, Perreau, and Nugent). Marion is preoccupied with the kids and the household, while MacMurray is longing for some alone time with her and to do something different - take a weekend off, go to the theater -- but something always happens that prevents it. When Marion can't make a theater performance because of their daughter's dance recital, Cliff stays home alone. A woman who once worked for him, Norma Vale (Stanwyck) comes over to say hello. She's now a successful dress designer in from New York. He takes her to the theater instead, and then she asks to see his office. When a planned weekend in the desert with Marion doesn't work out because one of the girls breaks her ankle, Marion insists that Clifford go without her and relax. There, he runs into Norma again. Unfortunately, his son (Reynolds) shows up and thinks Cliff and Norma are involved. He and his friends leave without making their presence known to his dad. Without realizing what's happening, Cliff is falling for Norma; and he doesn't know that she's always been in love with him. This is a midlife crisis, '50s style, with the underpinning of the grass is always greener. That wasn't the original intention, of course - the original intention of the film is that Norma is lonely and would give up her wonderful career to have a family like Marion and Cliff have. People still feel this way, but today, it's more because of the road not taken, not so much because of dissatisfaction. Nothing's perfect, as the film shows us. Cliff sees Norma's freedom, the attention she pays him, her interest in his work. He feels in fourth place behind the kids to Marion. He's sick of being like the robot that is his latest toy. You wind him up, he works, he comes home, he has dinner, he goes to bed. With Norma he sees an opportunity for something different. Youth. To be put first. Endless possibility. What a lovely movie, and I thought I was sitting down to some second feature. Instead, it has Sirk's magic touch and his sly criticism of the picture-perfect '50s American life. Frankly, I could have slapped the kids and Marion for not seeing what's in front of their faces, but to be fair, kids are self-involved, and Marion is completely committed to doing what she thinks is important for Cliff and their family. Wonderful acting, with MacMurray as the frustrated Everyman, Bennett as an attractive, disciplined woman, and Stanwyck has someone who has earned wisdom the hard way, through hard work and disappointment. Highly recommended.