HOMETOWN STORY (1951)

Here is a sixty-one-minute visual slice of Americana. Though well-acted and providing no lulls, the movie will never be on anyone’s bucket list. It makes a better television drama than an MGM movie. Yet it turned a small, six-figure profit from its minuscule budget. Some suggest this project is a General Motors self-promotion film. Perhaps. What is more important is Louis Forbes’ opening piano score, which sounds frighteningly like a depressing medical melodrama in which viewers are going to need absorbent facial tissues. Elsewhere, the score seems lifted from a typical Fifties or Sixties sitcom with dominating flutes.

It opens with views of an All-American city below, from a landing DC-3 airliner. The downtown is a wonderful snapshot of post-war America, and its quiet neighborhoods are tree-lined with white picket fences. No gas-powered lawnmowers or leaf blowers disrupt the silence. Harley-Davidson motorcycles are mostly used by patrol officers, all equipped with standard exhaust and not today's personal, noise-polluting after-market units.

Jeffrey Lynn plays a sore loser. He is a two-year Senator who was not re-elected and is quite defensive about it. Lynn inherits the senior editor position of the town’s newspaper from his uncle and plans to use this platform for political gain. Shame. Shame. He attacks one industry’s dumping of pollutants in the local river system, though its controller, Harry Harvey, provides evidence that their process does nothing of the kind. The parallels to today are obvious as Lynn starts spreading fake news about the evils of big corporations and their profits. Apparently, not coming to terms with the fact that most people in a business set out to make a profit. The CEO, Donald Crisp, visits Lynn and graciously offers his thoughts on how many people actually benefit from big industry profits. He hopes it will quell the negative editorials. But Lynn remains selfishly skeptical. Lynn's buddy and news reporter, Alan Hale, Jr., looking particularly handsome and oozing charm with a big smile, comes to blows with Lynn’s attacks and personal edginess.

Lynn’s seven-year fiancé—that is not a typo—Marjorie Reynolds, levels with him about why he lost the election. And maybe a wedding. Voters thought the celebrated war hero would make a difference, but they knew it was a mistake soon after pulling the lever. Ouch! Melinda Plowman's voice (Lynn’s baby sister) has been dubbed by sixteen fingernails across a blackboard. Judging by the vast age difference between brother and sister, she was probably a late “surprise” to mother and father. While on a school field trip, her life is spared, ironically, by Crisp's big corporation’s heavy equipment, the rapid response of its workers, and the company's air transportation to the necessary hospital. Waiting for the results in the waiting room, Lynn humbly realizes he was born to run a newspaper and not people's lives, with no future political ambitions. Probably. We hope.

Notes: The humorous scenes centered around Hale's attraction to Marilyn Monroe's savvy character are delightful thanks to her trademark, deadpan delivery. Another funny scene of camera trickery comes up later. While gazing in Monroe’s direction, without looking, Hale throws his fedora like a Frisbee behind him, across the editing room, where it lands properly on a female colleague’s head. I suspect no viewer saw that coming.

It would seem every poster, then and today's DVDs, gives the false impression that the nearly unknown Monroe is a major character. One might think she is the hometown story. Far from it, her scenes total about four minutes in this, her third film spot. Ray Teal had nearly as much screen time, but he was not even credited. Admittedly, Teal's sweaters do not fit quite the same. And there was something about his walk. Also uncredited is the familiar face of Hugh Beaumont, feeling quite at home in an idyllic town.