Tomorrow Is Forever vs Malpertuis

[Harvey Chartrand]

I saw a good, cleaned-up print of Irving Pichel's TOMORROW IS FOREVER on TCM recently and it struck me that this is actually one of Orson Welles's better "hired gun" acting jobs, because he seems to care about delivering a good performance. Welles had not yet gone to seed and become totally jaded, acting as if on auto-pilot (as he does in MALPERTUIS 25 years later). Welles no doubt viewed TOMORROW IS FOREVER as a silly confection... a "weeper", and therefore had no desire to co-direct, so he was able to focus on his acting. As Erik Kessler, Welles conveys the vulnerability and despair of a physically and psychologically damaged middle-aged man who can't reveal his terrible secret to anyone... and in the flashback scenes, the youthful pre-disfigurement John MacDonald is a young Charles Foster Kane lookalike, although a tad heftier. It's odd to see Welles deliver a performance with such passion. Strangely, the general ambience and set decoration are reminiscent of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and Welles's voice is still an astonishing instrument in 1946, not yet coarsened by his incessant cigar smoking. The rumbling Wellesian wheeziness has yet to emerge. I'd actually forgotten what a damn fine actor he was. Although TOMORROW IS FOREVER may be unworthy of his talents, and was the first step in the direction of paycheck parts in crummy pictures, it's really quite acceptable for what it is, if one can stand the scenes with the insufferably well intentioned [and super bland] George Brent. Still... an unexpected delight, as TOMORROW IS FOREVER is usually dismissed as a cornball cinematic atrocity and an insult to the brain.

[mido505]

Hear, hear, Harvey, I caught that showing too, and was pleasantly surprised by Welles' subtle, nuanced, and finally deeply moving performance. It is one of the very few truly "naturalistic" Welles performances, as opposed to the "Brechtian" (The Stranger, Lady from Shanghai), "expressionist" (Macbeth, Touch of Evil), or just plain hammy (Long Hot Summer, anyone) styles that he typically favored. Would that there had been more...

[Glenn Anders]

Harvey, mido505: Another aspect of Welles' performance in TOMORROW IS FOREVER is the fact that Irving Pichel directed it.

Born in 1891, a Harvard graduate, Pichel had a long career as an actor, director, narrator, and educator (in other words, the kind of career Orson Welles aspired to), ranging from the stage to movies to radio to the University of California. Early on, a close friend of George S. Kaufman (a pal of Welles), he influenced several successful Broadway theatrical careers -- i.e., Joseph Shildkraut. Then, moving to Hollywood, he was originally hired as an actor for the dual role of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde that went to Fredrick March in the 1931 version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. [Considered "too ethnic," Director Rouben Momouleon waggishly suggested that if Pichel got the part, they would have call the picture, "Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde."] Pichel was relegated to exotic character roles and villains of the sort that attracted Orson Welles, and he developed similar makeup and vocal tricks as he played Fagin in OLIVER TWIST (1933), Yomadori in MADAM BUTTERFLY (1932), Sergei Pavlov, a Russian Commissar, in BRITISH AGENT (1934), the German Agent, von Brecht, in THE SILVER STREAK (1934), Apollodorus in CLEOPATRA (1935), Sandor in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936), and General Carabajal in JUAREZ (1938).

Also, in that time, Pichel gained directing experience in Hollywood and on the new medium of Radio. He co-directed THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (with Ernst B.Schoedsack -- 1931), directed SHE (1935), I MARRIED A NAZI (aka, The Man I Married, 1940), THE MOON IS DOWN (1943), and THEY WON'T BELIEVE ME (1947). He acted in and directed various radio shows of the 1940's, and was the narrator for John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941), DECEMBER 7TH (1943), and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949).

He occasionally took small parts in the films he directed.

And so, despite his ups and downs, Pichel was the kind of actor/director/narrator who might very well have been suited to Welles in 1946, when they made TOMORROW IS FOREVER together.

At the time of his death, Pichel was teaching at UCLA, and involved in religious projects (another Wellsian interest) such as MARTIN LUTHER (1953) and DAY OF TRIUMPH (1954), a life of Christ.

Glenn