(2 of 2)
Keeper of the Flame (M.G.M.) is an expensive testimonial to Hollywood's inability to face a significant theme. The theme—that Fascism might offer itself to the U.S. behind a handsome and disarming face—was bought by R.K.O. about two years ago in the form of an idea for an unwritten novel by Ida R. Wylie, and shelved. M.G.M. picked up the synopsis for a fee, fiddled around trying to make it conform to Hollywood's formula. The long delay was ruinous—the film is now neither effective propaganda nor good red melodrama.
As projected by three of M.G.M.'s most costly packagers (Director George Cukor, Producer Victor Saville, Scenarist Donald Ogden Stewart), Keeper of the Flame sets Foreign Correspondent Spencer Tracy, home in the U.S. for a change of scene, on the trail of an idolized American statesman named Robert Forrest. Forrest's seemingly accidental death in a New England village makes Tracy's newsnose itch.
Clean-scrubbed Katharine Hepburn is there, cold, distant, beglamored, and Tracy falls for her. That is unfortunate, in a way, because she is Hero Forrest's widow, and after considerable melodramatic messing around the question confronting Tracy is: did she murder her husband to save the U.S. from a Fascist coup?
This impasse is resolved by shooting Miss Hepburn—after she delivers the picture's one forthright utterance: a diatribe on Hero Forrest's "antiSemitic . . . anti-Catholic . . . anti-Negro . . . antilabor" movement. For Stars Hepburn and Tracy and all concerned, it is the high point of a significant failure.
CURRENT & CHOICE
Shadow of a Doubt (Teresa Wright, Joseph Gotten; TIME, Jan. 18).
Commandos Strike at Dawn (Paul Muni, Lillian Gish, Robert Coote, Anna Lee; TIME, Jan. 18).
Tennessee Johnson (Van Heflin, Ruth Hussey, Lionel Barrymore; TIME, Jan. 11).
Journey for Margaret (Margaret O'Brien, Robert Young, Laraine Day; TIME, Jan. 11).
In Which We Serve (Noel Coward, Bernard Miles, John Mills, Celia Johnson; TIME, Dec. 28).
Random Harvest (Greer Garson, Ronald Colman, Susan Peters; TIME, Dec. 28).