Since You Went Away stars Claudette Colbert as a World War II housewife keeping the home fires burning whilst her husband is away fighting Nazis. Her daughters are played by Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple.

Synopsis

When patriarch Tim Hilton leaves to fight in World War II, he leaves behind wife Anne (Claudette Colbert) and daughters Jane (Jennifer Jones) and ‘Brig’ (Shirley Temple). To make ends meet, Anne rents out the main room to the grumpy, retired Col. William G. Smollett (Monty Woolley) whose estranged grandson Bill (Robert Walker) is also about to leave for war.

Anne begins a flirtation with an old flame (Joseph Cotton), adding to the drama of a family trying it’s best to keep the home fires burning until Tim returns.

Review, by @Reelreviewer

A mightily overlong (it weighs in at just under three hours), this soppy, terribly musty romantic drama that chronicles how a terribly middle-class family of women left ‘rudderless’ without their dear, darling papa.

Producer David O. Selznick was certainly skilled at splashing flippin’ great wodges of cash (about $57m if adjusted for inflation) on his super productions.

This one was a costly big hit, not as big as his next megamovie (Duel in The Sun, 1946), but close, and it replaces controversial raciness for twee homeliness.

Starry with reigning box office queen Claudette Colbert in the lead, she is a saintly, perfectly groomed miracle of modern patience.

She needs to be, with one almost grown up, exceedingly beautiful daughter (Jennifer Jones) panting after anything in trousers and needing to be kept a close eye on until a harmless, sweet, emasculated golden boy (Robert Walker) hop, skips and jumps into view.

Younger daughter is another box office champ, the former child star Shirley Temple. If they’d written her character as a bit tougher and rebellious, this could have been a humdinger of a part for her. As it is, she merely faffs in the foreground with little to nothing to do.

Jones was catapulted to stardom and won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Selznick’s religious drama The Song of Bernadette (1943). At some point between making that film and the cameras rolling on SYWA, Selznick and Jones – who were both married – started an affair. It was an emotionally complicated arrangement, a sexual Faustian pact, as Selznick made her a movie goddess and the mentally fragile Jones grew in beauty and confidence.

That her first husband – the doomed actor Robert Walker – was cast in SYWA as her love interest adds a distinctly nasty element to the proceedings and explains why their kissing scenes – few and far between – are so obviously uncomfortable for the two of them. In the movie’s most famous sequence (memorably parodied in Airplane! 1980), they bid a seemingly endless goodbye at a railway station.

For his part, Walker really pushes hard as the callow soldier smitten with a pretty girl, longing for a radiant memory to sustain him when he’s on the frontline. He gives a performance of gauche innocence that is still adorable.

Walker died in 1951 at the age of 32 from alcoholism that was aggravated by his painful split from Jones. His doctor gave him a sedative when Walker had been drinking, killing him almost on the spot.

Hats off to hairstylists Peggy Higgins and Margaret Martin by creating similar barnets for three dissimilar looking women, almost convincing us they might be related.

The whole move is unbelievably beautiful, impeccably dressed, designed and then radiantly captured by Stanley Cortez and Leon Garmes, two of the finest cinematographers working in Hollywood at this point.

African American star Hattie McDaniel (and first non-white Oscar winning actor for Gone With the Wind, 1939) was oft-cast servant or slave but added depth and warmth to characters that were one-sided on paper. Here, she has an odd role and one that gives me shudders far more than her Mammy in Wind. She is the Hilton’s former housekeeper and cook but is let go as they could no longer afford her salary.

But so desperate is she to remain their skivvy, she comes back for free. Soon, she goes from working alongside Colbert in the kitchen, to being kept out of the way as they sip cocktails in the living room (at least when she’s on screen, everyone else moans less about their dire straits).

No matter what privations people in Hollywood movies of the 1940’s went through, there was always enough cash for a Martini…and top-of-the-line make-up, clothing and hair products.

McDaniell is also the only character to Cotton on that Joseph, the disruptively friendly soldier/friend, is sniffing around Colbert after spying a (probably) dead man’s shoes to fill. “Don’t worry about your mother” he tells Jones and Temple as they fuss about him madly as a temporary father figure “I’m counting on your girls spoiling me plenty!”

But weren’t these women doing OK without him?

Shrill and impactful in support are the ‘villains’ of the piece, Woolley (who, aside from demanding food and succor, develops a love for British Bulldogs during the movie) and Agnes Moorehead as Anne’s snooty, socialite pal.

Silent movie legend Alla Nazimova – she who made the avante-garde, LGBTQ-slanted version of Wilde’s Salome (1922), after a cinematic gap of 15 years, made a comeback in 1940’s Adventure. Thereafter, she found herself gainfully employed with strong character roles in big, starry movies. Since You Went Away – in which she stars as Zofia, a refugee factory worker – was her final movie.

The hunky, friendly sailor with the ‘Tom of Finland’ hairstyle who intrudes on Jones and Walkers’ romantic tryst, is played by Guy Madison, who would soon become a matinee idol in his own right (and watch out for the cats that follow the ‘love route’ Jones and Walker take).

In real-life, director John Cromwell’s son is the actor James, who played the farmer in Babe (1995) and many other movie roles.

Cast & credits

Director: John Cromwell (Edward F. Cline, Tay Garnett, David O. Selznick). 2h 52m (172 mins. UK duration). Selznick International Pictures. (U).

Producer: David O. Selznick.
Writer: David O. Selznick.
Camera: Stanley Cortez, Lee Garmes.
Music: Max Steiner.
Sets: William L. Pereira.

Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Monty Woolley, Lionel Barrymore, Robert Walker, Hattie McDaniel, Agnes Moorehead, Alla Nazimova, Guy Madison.