Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 13-December-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Love is News (1937)/That Wonderful Urge (1948)

I have reviewed movies and their remakes together before, but until now I have never reviewed a movie-remake combo where the same actor starred in both. Eleven years, two leading ladies, and several plot changes separate Love is News and That Wonderful Urge yet each puts Tyrone Power front and center. As they say, you can't have too much of a good thing.

You can have too much of a bad thing, however, and as every celebrity knows, paparazzi constitute one of those things. These pictures must be a movie star's fantasy. The earlier one unfolds around the world of newshounds so popular in the 1930s and early '40s. Power is Steve Leyton, a reporter who enjoys a love-hate relationship with his editor (Don Ameche) and a predator-prey relationship with Antoinette "Tony" Gateson, an heiress whose every move he exploits for his readership. One of the major factors in the superiority of Love is News is Loretta Young's warm, accessible beauty in the role of Tony. As for Power, he looks irresistibly fresh, without the air of preoccupation he evinced in later years. Their compatibility led to them teaming up again after this.

After Steve tricks Tony into giving him information about her break-up with a European count (George Sanders), she decides to get even. Going before a swarm of his fellows she announces her engagement to Steve, or rather "Stevekins," and lets on about a large sum of money she gave him as a love token. This instantly brands him both a Somebody and a shameless gigolo. He is besieged by curious fans of the rich and hucksters wanting to help him dispense of his wealth. He can no longer play booze checkers on the floor of his favorite bar because he is ridiculed and ostracized by his peers. Relations with his editor shift into the hate phase, and it looks like his job will go out the window with his dignity.

In That Wonderful Urge the reporter is named Thomas Jefferson Tyler and is dubbed "Tom-Tom" after the press gets wind of his full-blown marriage to heiress Sara Farley (Gene Tierney). This version is vaguer about the lady's intentions with the lie and, given that she commits perjury to prove it, her character is much less appealing. (Tom has a girlfriend whom he treats far too casually so he is no Prince Charming either.) The focus on their trial and Sara's glamorous lifestyle means goodbye to the screwball newsroom vibe and hello to racy innuendo, which may account for the movie's silly title. Still, the picture does introduce a very funny scene in which Tom-Tom crashes a party to find his "wife," telling her friends "I always have wanted to mingle with the filthy rich" and recounting tales from his fictitious Appalachian upbringing.

It is interesting that after the enemies fall in love (a fact which can hardly be considered a spoiler), we are left to imagine how the working man retains his honor despite hooking up with the heiress for real. The blow is apparently softened by the woman being humbled at the end of each show. (Let the poor boy score a rich mate but let's have no question who wears the pants!) I suppose one needs to remember that love is not only news and a wonderful urge, but a force that can conquer bitter bygones, social stigma, and masculine pride.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.