When Tomorrow Comes

source: When Tomorrow Comes

Moviecut—When Tomorrow Comes

After Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne had been paired together in the fabulous Love Affair (1939), someone decided to pair them together again (that's the other film of theirs- Together Again (1944)), and this was the result. It starts as a drama about women going on strike for unfair wages and there's a lot of time devoted to a working people's union, then Dunne meets Boyer and the next part of the film is devoted to their acquaintance, then there is a hurricane and they're forced to take refuge in a church, then there's drama involving Boyer, his unstable wife (gee, it's Barbara O'Neill! What a shocker! 😏) and his love with Dunne, but this being a Hollywood movie, the good couple wins- moralistically, of course. This was made under the production code, after all. It's not that the film needed a couple of cuts- in fact, with all the plot changes, it should have been half an hour longer, or even two Dunne-Boyer films. It's that it jumps around too much and it's boring. Dunne's working woman fair wages campaign is pretty much forgotten about after she falls in love with Boyer. Not enough time is given to Barbara O'Neill's character, other than to develop her as a crazy psycho b*tch, and remind us that O'Neill was so much more effective as Boyer's crazy psycho b*tch wife in All This, And Heaven Too (1940). Dunne is no more or less annoying than usual- she sings a song while Boyer plays the piano, so her fans will like that. Me, I'm not overly fond of her singing, and so I just tuned out until she was done. She and Boyer have chemistry that was just as good as what they had in Love Affair, and this film has a moralistic ending too, but what the ending of Love Affair is sweet and will bring a tear to your eye, the ending of this one is like "Well, now it's over and you can do something else now." The acting is pretty good, O'Neill is very over-the-top, but if you've seen AT,AHT, you know what to expect from her in a role like this. Overall, not as good as Love Affair, but not quite as bad as Together Again. It won't kill you if yoy watch it, but it's disappointing.

Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne couldn't catch a break in 1939. First LOVE AFFAIR turns out badly for the body of the movie, then here we have Miss Dunne, a waitress, in love with Boyer, a concert pianist-prince with Barbara O'Neil as his mad wife. He loves her too, but Miss O'Neil has bouts of sanity, during which she comes to Miss Dunne's apartment. This is one of the prestige dramas that John Stahl directed every year or so for Universal during the 1930s. As in the other movie, the chemistry between the leads is marvelous. This movie is the lesser, which I attribute to the utter lack of humor of Stahl, as opposed to Leo McCarey. Of course, the fact that a reported 21 writers worked on this picture may have given the film maker so much material that any humor had to be cut. Once you get past the meet cute, in which Boyer tries to order apple pie with cheese, hold the pie, it's all a romantic heartbreaker with their unfulfilled love. And that it is.

Love Affair proved so popular a film that Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne were reteamed in When Tomorrow Comes at Universal Pictures. Dunne who is usually chic and stylish plays a cafe waitress who gets to wait on Charles Boyer. No one there including Dunne realizes he's a world famous concert pianist. Dunne goes on strike as the waitresses get organized. Boyer courts her when she's not on the picket line. They have a nice romantic interlude on Long Island when a hurricane hits. Boyer is keeping secrets from her like the fact he's already married to Barbara O'Neil who has some mental issues. There's a choice to be made by both of them that's obvious. What they do is for you to watch the film for. Both keep up the same romantic standard set in Love Affair. When Tomorrow Comes won an Oscar for Sound Recording. Fans of the stars will approve

...and I did like some aspects of the film. But overall, this film just seemed to stray off course a few times too often. At the beginning of the film, an inordinate amount of time was spent on the wait staff's union business. It was an okay place to start, but it went on so long that it cheated us in terms of the real meat of the plot. Some dialog here and there actually made me stop and think, "Gee, that was dumb". And then the ending...I found it totally unsatisfactory (was that a code consideration?). On other hand, I like Irene Dunne, although I didn't like her here as much as I usually do. To me, she doesn't come across as well as a lowly waitress as well as she came across in more somewhat upper class films such as "The Awful Truth" (with Cary Grant). Recently I've been taking a second look at Charles Boyer and I've gained more respect for his acting than I once had. He's really very good here. I give the film high marks for the special effects. Special effects in a love story? Yes, the hurricane is done quite nicely for 1939, and the scene in the flooded church is nicely done. I watched this film on TCM, and this was one of the worst prints I've ever seen them present. Of course, that's not the film's fault, but this is one picture that desperately needs to be restored.

Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne star in "When Tomorrow Comes," a 1939 film directed by John Stahl and based on a story by James Cain. Cain sued for copyright infringement, stating the scene in the church was stolen from his story "Serenade" but he lost. Helen and Philip (Dunne and Boyer) meet when she waits on him in a restaurant. She learns later he's a famous concert pianist. The waitresses are planning to strike; Philip appears at the meeting and is impressed by her speech. The two make a date to meet, and he takes her out on his boat, then to his Long Island home - where they meet the famous 1938 hurricane and wind up stranded in a church. When the hurricane passes, the two must face the tumult in their lives. This is a sweet film. It does not have the scope of the Dunne/Boyer Love Affair, and the story is predictable (as was Love Affair). As they proved in their previous film, Boyer and Dunne have wonderful chemistry and warmth. Boyer must have been an interesting guy - the great screen lover who never, ever wore his toupee when he wasn't making a movie. Neither he nor the very private Dunne ever let Hollywood get the better of them. Scarlett's mother, Barbara O'Neil, has a small but showy role. Good movie.

The star-crossed couple from "Love Affair" (Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne) are reunited in the same year's "When Tomorrow Comes", I know K women's picture that starts off with like comedy, switches into a disaster film and then ends on a soap opera note. The two meet when Boyer sits at a crowded lunch table in the cafe where Dunne works, preparing to lead her co-workers on strike for unfair treatment. After convincing done and fellow waitress Nydia Westman that he is not a company spy, Boyer sneaks into their union meeting then takes Dunne out on a trip to Long Island where a torrential storm leaves them stranded. When they returned to town, Dunne learns that boy has a mentally ill wife (Barbara O'Neill) who has no intention of letting her husband go. How will a woman of Dunne's high moral character deal with the possibility being a backstreet mistress? The same way she did in 1932? Or the same way that Margaret Sullivan would 2 years later in the remake of that 1930 to version of "Back Street", ironically co-starring opposite Boyer. While enjoyable in the first half as a light comedy, the change in moods makes it a perplexing film and ultimately hard to fully recommend. Of course, Boyer and Dunne have outstanding chemistry, receiving a claim for the same years "Love Affair". Like that classic, this also had a 1950's remake, "Interlude", starring June Allyson and Rossano Brazzi. Like this film, it too is pretty much forgotten, while the original "Love Affair" and its remake ("An Affair to Remember") are considered classics and still popular today. The background score of this film is beautiful to look at with its lush sound and dramatic effect. Supporting performances are good, and it's interesting to see O'Neill, having played the understanding second wife in "Stella Dallas", Scarlett O'Hara's mother in "Gone With the Wind", and of course her Oscar-nominated performance as Boyer's even more bitter wife in "All This and Heaven Too". It's unfortunate that the script never knows what it wants to be, so I must refer to it as "The Three Faces of Love" due to its obvious split personality.

Director: JOHN M. STAHL. Screenplay: Dwight Taylor. Based on the novel Modern Cinderella by James M. Cain. Photography: John Mescall. Film editor: Milton Carruth. Art directors: Martin Obzina, Jack Otterson. Set decorator: Russell A. Gausman. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Music: Charles Previn, Frank Skinner. Assistant director: Joseph A. McDonough. Uncredited script contributors: Herbert J. Biberman, Aben Kandel, Charles Kaufman, John Larkin. Irene Dunne's gowns: Howard Greer. Gowns: Vera West. Music director: Charles Previn. Sound supervisor: Bernard B. Brown. Sound engineer: Joe Lapis. Producer: John M. Stahl. Copyright 16 August 1939 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. New York opening at the Rivoli, 16 August 1939. U.S. release: 11 August 1939. Australian release: 28 September 1939. 10 reels. 92 minutes. SYNOPSIS: What Irene Dunne doesn't know is that concert pianist Boyer is married. NOTES: Academy Award, Sound Recording (beating Balalaika, GWTW, Goodbye Mr Chips, The Great Victor Herbert, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Man of Conquest, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice and Men, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and The Rains Came). Re-made as Interlude in 1957, and again as Interlude in 1968. COMMENT: Lavishly produced romantic melodrama with some marvelous special effects and fascinating backgrounds that will keep male interest alive while the womenfolks weep into their lace-edged handkerchiefs. The film's main drawback is Irene Dunne. Wearing ghastly costumes and unbecomingly groomed, Miss Dunne looks about as glamorous as an old dish-mop. Fortunately, the rest of the cast is fine: Boyer charmingly elegant, and a fine study in madness from Barbara O'Neil. A lesser defect is that the script starts us off with a militant union and strike background ("Solidarity forever/For the union makes us strong!") and then darts off at a tangent for the hurricane episodes and the mad wife. These occupy most of the film and when we finally get back to the strike, it is called off in a most perfunctory and dramatically unsatisfactory fashion! John M. Stahl's direction has flair and other production credits are equally polished.

I love Dunne and Boyer and think they are a good match. However, I am constantly amazed at how long Irene Dunne was able to get away with 20-something roles. She is 41 here, and looks it. She is playing a waitress with a roommate who is about to strike for better pay. Her character at most would be 25. Yet producers continued to give Dunne these types of roles even after this movie. I don't really get it. When Lana Turner was in her early 40s, she was playing mothers of teenagers in "Imitation of Life" and "Portrait in Black" and Mary Astor had moved to these roles by the time she was 38. I don't understand why they weren't moving Dunne to more motherly roles by this time; she certainly does not look or act like an ingenue.