{"id":4141,"date":"2011-03-14T11:46:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T11:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etbscreenwriting.com\/\/?p=4141"},"modified":"2011-03-14T11:46:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T11:46:52","slug":"the-shopworn-angel-day-five-40movies40days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etbscreenwriting.com\/the-shopworn-angel-day-five-40movies40days\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shopworn Angel – Day Five – #40movies40days"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Margaret<\/a>I selected this movie because it was on our VCR at home. \u00a0My husband had recorded it and I watched it while cleaning up the kitchen. \u00a0Pretty soon I was sitting down and snuffling a few tears at the end.<\/p>\n

The Shopworn Angel is Waldo Salt’s first credited screenplay. \u00a0He joined the American Communist Party in 1938, and was a civilian consultant to the U.S. Office of War Information during World War II.[citation needed]<\/div>\n
Salt’s career in Hollywood was interrupted when he was blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951. Like many other blacklisted writers, while he was unable to work in Hollywood Salt wrote pseudonymously for the British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood.[3] After the collapse of the blacklist, Salt won Academy Awards for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home, and a nomination for his work on Serpico.<\/div>\n
The Shopworn Angel<\/em> is Waldo Salt’s first credited screenplay. \u00a0It’s an oddly subversive anti-war film wrapped in sentimental patriotism.\u00a0It speaks powerfully of the cost of war.<\/div>\n
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Beautiful young men like the young private in the film \u00a0get chewed up in the maw of unceasing of greed and fear that launches every war machine. \u00a0Is it a good thing or a bad thing to preserve the illusions– honor, glory, courage, country– that allow young men to be sent to certain death?<\/div>\n
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Salt was blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951. Like many other blacklisted writers, he wrote pseudonymously for projects in the UK. \u00a0After the collapse of the blacklist, Salt won Academy Awards for Midnight Cowboy<\/em> and Coming Home. <\/em>He was nominated for his work on Serpico<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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The Shopworn Ange<\/em>l features the second screen pairing of actors Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart.\u00a0He is so young in this picture, barely in his twenties!<\/div>\n
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At the time of their first picture together, Stewart was a minor contract player at MGM. When Sullavan brought up Stewart’s name the studio casting-directors had never heard of him. \u00a0At Sullavan’s suggestion, Universal agreed to test him for her leading man and he was borrowed to star with Sullavan in Next Time We Love<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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\"images\"<\/a>According to Wikipedia: \u00a0Stewart had been nervous and unsure of himself during the early stages of production of their first film together. He had had only two minor MGM roles which had not given him much camera time or experience. The director, Edward H. Griffith, bullied Stewart during that first production.<\/div>\n
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“Maggie, he’s wet behind the ears,” Griffith told Sullavan. “He’s going to make a mess of things.”<\/div>\n
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Sullavan believed in Stewart and spent the evenings coaching him and helping him scale down his awkward mannerisms and hesitant speech that would soon be famous around the world.<\/div>\n
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“It was Margaret Sullavan who made Stewart a star,” director Griffith later said. Bill Grady the casting director from MGM agreed. “That boy came back from Universal so changed I hardly recognized him”.<\/div>\n
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The inevitable gossip in Hollywood at that time (1935\u201336) was that William Wyler, Sullavan’s then-husband, was suspicious about his wife’s and Stewart’s private rehearsing together. When Sullavan divorced Wyler in 1936 and married Leland Hayward that same year, they moved to a colonial house just a block down from Stewart.<\/div>\n
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Stewart’s frequent visits to the Sullavan\/Hayward home soon restoked the rumors of his romantic feelings for Sullavan.<\/div>\n
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The Shopworn Angel<\/em> (1938) was their second movie together. “Why, they\u00b4re red-hot when they get in front of a camera,” Louis B. Mayer said about their onscreen chemistry. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but it sure jumps off the screen”.<\/div>\n
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Walter Pidgeon, who was part of the triangle in The Shopworn Angel<\/em> later recalled: “I really felt like the odd-man-out in that one. It was really all Jimmy and Maggie … It was so obvious he was in love with her. He came absolutely alive in his scenes with her, playing with a conviction and a sincerity I never knew him to summon away from her”.<\/div>\n
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Eventually the duo would do four movies together from 1936-1940 (Next Time We Love<\/em>, The Shopworn Angel<\/em>, The Shop Around the Corner<\/em> and The Mortal Storm<\/em>).<\/div>\n
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\"shopworn\"<\/a>The plot of The Shopworn Angel <\/em>is simple. \u00a0A dreamy innocent young soldier from Texas, Private Pettigrew (Jimmy Stewart), is awed by big city New York. \u00a0Crossing the street he is almost run down by a private limousine. \u00a0The cop at the fender bender insists the car’s occupant deliver the soldier to the nearby camp. \u00a0The young man climbs in to meet a famous cabaret singer, Daisy Heath (Margaret Sullavan).<\/div>\n
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He lies to his buddies and tells them that Daisy is his sweetheart. \u00a0The guys insist on meeting her at the stage door. Daisy, taking pity on the awkward Pettigrew, plays along. \u00a0Pettigrew mistakes her pity for genuine interest and keeps coming back.<\/div>\n
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She is entranced by his simple sincerity, his innocence and his enthusiasm for life. \u00a0She is deeply jaded and only cares about career, comfort and luxury. \u00a0Her boyfriend finances her show. \u00a0They have a contentious relationship based mostly on \u00a0party-going and self-interest (she needs him to bankroll the show and she is the draw that brings the customers in).<\/div>\n
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In the short period of time before Pettigrew ships out, the soldier and the cabaret singer grow close. He is starry-eyed and Daisy is his dream girl. \u00a0He knows he is cannon fodder, being amongst the first wave of soldiers sent to France. \u00a0He know he’s going to die, so does she and so does the audience.\u00a0In 1938, when the film was made, the horrific carnage of the “Great War” was well documented. \u00a0And the world was gearing up for another World War.<\/div>\n
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Pettigrew’s pure honest example teaches Daisy and her boyfriend Sam (Walter Pigeon) the meaning of real love. \u00a0Daisy discovers she truly love Sam and he loves her. \u00a0But Daisy can’t break Pettigrew’s heart. She marries him to give him a dream to hold on to. \u00a0Sam stands by her and the inevitable happens. Pettigrew dies in battle.<\/div>\n
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In this movie love is an illusion but it is also real. \u00a0Daisy does love Pettigrew but she knows he has no future. \u00a0Sam is her true love. \u00a0He proves worthy of Daisy’s love by allowing her to do this one unselfish thing. They delay their happiness to give Pettigrew his.<\/div>\n
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Pettigrew talks about spending his whole life pretending– imagining what his sweetheart would be like. Now he doesn’t have to pretend because he has the real thing– her. \u00a0But she isn’t really his. \u00a0She is just on loan to him for a time. \u00a0She has another destiny and he is blissfully unaware of that.<\/div>\n
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Perhaps we are all just on loan to each other. Perhaps love is always part illusion and part reality. Perhaps the most important component of love is kindness– and that’s what makes it real. \u00a0It is kindness that makes Daisy fully human and worthy of love. \u00a0It is kindness that works the same magic on Sam.<\/div>\n
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Perhaps an easier all encompassing commandment would be: \u00a0Be Kind. \u00a0If I could just do that it would eliminate the need for most of the other rules. \u00a0Here is my first decision of the journey. \u00a0I will be kind. \u00a0At least for the remainder of these 40 days I will mentally stop before I say or do anything and ask: \u00a0“Is it kind?”<\/div>\n
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Of course just this morning, as I walked to my office, any number of rude remarks popped into my head about a particularly annoying jogger, I mourned the gossip and witty sniping I would have to forgo. \u00a0And I can snipe with the best of them.<\/div>\n
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Be kind! \u00a0Blah– Such a simple statement will be incredibly hard to put into practice. \u00a0It is the death of one-ups-manship. \u00a0It allows no room for desperation or insecurity. \u00a0It requires the solid assurance, the simple faith if you will, that I will get what I need. \u00a0That I can afford be generous. And that I can be comfortable with being patient.<\/div>\n
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Will this make me a doormat or a victim? \u00a0Not if being kind extends to myself. \u00a0Sometimes the kindest thing is to move on, say no or end a relationship. \u00a0The kindness comes in doing so without ill-will, in good humor and with quiet conviction (rather than with excuses, accusations or verbal fireworks). \u00a0 I’ve been cleaning out physical clutter in my office. \u00a0Perhaps being kind is a way to help clean out the emotional clutter in my work.<\/div>\n
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Here is the film in it’s entirety:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n