Joan Crawford and William Falkner

CRAWFORD, COOPER AND HAWKS.

Today We Live - Crawford & Cooper

Finally managed to see Today We Live, a production that has remained elusive during all my years of hard movie going, despite a cast headed by Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone and Robert Young and the participation of William Faulkner and of Howard Hawks, a director who was all but deified by the activities of French critics in the 1960s.

It turns out to be accomplished for its 1933 origins. This one gets by as entertainment but more absorbing than any fun viewing qualities is the tussle between two of the major movie styles - a Howard Hawks male bonding piece and a Metro Joan Crawford glamor vehicle.

We kick in 1915 off with American visitor Cooper being asked by the customs man where his sympathies lie and, having nothing to say, getting his passport stamped “Neutral.” English (!) lady of the manor Crawford receives the message that her father has just been killed at the WW1 front but still receives new tenant Cooper, who is sufficiently thoughtless to request their sugar ration for his tea in the inevitable leaded window drawing room. Nevertheless it’s love at first sight and the pair go bicycling through the back lot representation of English lanes. 

This doesn’t go down too well with Joan’s childhood sweetheart Robert Young as he and her brother Franchot Tone ship out for small boat duty on the channel coast.

Gary rejects his status as “rich, neutral and out of things” signing up for the U.S. flying corps and trading their wings insignia for a Royal Air Force set. Franchot is the one to bring the news that Gary’s been killed in action. Deep in grief Joan goes off and pairs with Bob without benefit of clergy - pre code shock!

However Gary, reports of his death greatly exaggerated, turns up at the same port where Joan has had herself stationed as a nurse and he resents the new arrangement when he hears about Bob’s fun little boat trips after Gary’s used to seeing his gunners loaded out of the plane with blood pouring from their mouths. Running into Bob at a bar, he invites him to fly with them - and see real action. Sidekick Roscoe Karns, excellent in a part effectively enhanced from the usual comic relief, shows concern.

Rather than being fear stricken, Bob mans the Vickers gun and enthusiastically  takes out at least three Boche - suspense cranked up by the undischarged bomb which only he notices till they land.

After some more Madonna like close ups of Joan, it gets to be the suicide mission in the fog and rain which can be undertaken by Gary’s plane or Bob’s torpedo boat. Some genuine suspense here as Coop should get the girl because he has top billing but Bob’s claim is bolstered by the admittedly dodgy marriage bond.

Hawks appears to have found Metro an uneasy base. Both Viva Villa and (the excellent) Prizefighter and the Lady were finished by others and he never worked with the studio after these. However he does have the studio's excellent craft departments to draw on - Oliver Marsh’s gleaming images nicely reproduced on the Warner Archive disk and Cedric Gibbons design. He seems to find enough wiggle room to have the key scene with Cooper and Crawford backed with single piano rather than the usual lush orchestration. However Gilbert Adrian’s idea of period fashion is to send in Joan in something that looks like a flight attendant’s uniform from a Flash Gordon serial.

We recognise Hawks feeble comedy with the cockroach jokes anticipating Walter Brennan demanding "Was you ever bitten by a dead bee?" Also curious is Hawks' attempt to simulate clipped British English by removing the pronouns from sentences - this from the director who would pioneer lapping dialogue.

Today We Live has a family aspect being the director’s first association with William Faulkner who would continue working on his films into the fifties though it’s been said that the collaboration was often an exchange of the novelist’s prestige for the studio’s dollars. Action director Richard Rosson would again share the 1943 Corvette K225 with Hawks. His final torpedo run is the film’s highlight. This sub-plot would seem to be the origins of They Were Expendable with similar ocean speeding material. The mix of  Rosson’s footage, stock from Hells Angels, model work and studio shooting run up by editor Edward Curtiss lifts the piece from it’s soapier passages. Cooper and Karns both appeared in Wings though not in the same scenes, and Crawford’s marriage to Cooper’s Bengal Lancers co-star Franchot Tone would place her with the Group Theater in an attempt to sharpen her skills. Think Marilyn Monroe and Actor’s studio. 

Young & Crawford

Most significant is the fact that it is the first collaboration between Hawks and Gary Cooper who would combine on Sergeant York and Ball of Fire, two of the key films from the Golden Years. We’ve got to give this one points. It’s uneasy coupling works better than Cooper and Henry Hathaway’s swoony Peter Ibetson. Hawks and Faulkner hold Metro at bay better than Borzage and Scott Fitzgerald doing Three Comrades five years later.

There’s enough here to get the attention of any vintage movie freak. What the Wonder Woman audience would make of it is speculative but that’s not going to happen is it?