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23 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
One OF Hollywood's Finest Hours!, 16 September 2009

Author: jpdoherty from Ireland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Warner Bros. KINGS ROW (1942) is ,without doubt, one of Hollywood's most enduring and best loved cinema classics from its Golden Age! Produced by Hal Wallis it was crisply photographed by ace Cinematographer James Wong Howe in glorious black & white and contains one of the finest musical scores ever wedded to a film soundtrack. Also, like his work on "Gone With The Wind" Production Designer William Cameron Menzies brought the small town setting of KINGS ROW to vivid life and director Sam Wood ensured Menzies approach was adhered to with his stylish direction.

Based on the controversial novel by Henry Bellamann it is quiet astonishing that KINGS ROW ever went before the cameras at all! The story revolves around three children growing into adulthood in a small American mid - western town just before the turn of the 20th century and their exposure to all manner of human excesses, frailties and shortcomings. The book is peppered with a plethora of taboo subjects (especially for the forties) such as nymphomania, incest, insanity, sadism, and homosexuality. But brilliant screen writer Casey Robinson ("Now Voyager") managed, by some miracle, to skillfully skirt around these problems, defuse and avoid any elaborations and viewing the finished film it is difficult to decipher any of the character weaknesses Bellamann wrote about.

The cast is reasonably good! Top billed is the lovely Ann Sheridan as the feisty and endearing Randy Monaghan. It is her finest performance and the best film she ever did! Surprisingly the usually wooden Ronald Reagan turns in a more than passable performance as the somewhat carefree ladies man Drake McHugh. And he is most convincing in the startling scene where he awakens to discover both his legs have been amputated and screaming repeatedly "WHERE'S THE REST OF ME?" (a line the actor would use later for the title of his autobiography in 1965). The weakest link in the cast is Robert Cummings (borrowed from Universal) as the leading protagonist Parris Mitchell! His one note performance reduces the character to nothing more than an uninteresting over prim and prissy bore. Cummings retains nothing of the likable personality already established early in the picture by the delightful portrayal of child actor the ill-fated Scotty Beckett as the young Parris. Excellent too is Claude Rains as Dr. Towers and Parris' mentor, Betty Field as his deranged daughter, James Coburn as the sadistic doctor, the great Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya as Parris' grandmother and her good friend Col. Skeffington played by the always likable Harry Davenport ("When she passes ...how much passes with her?....a whole way of life, a way of gentleness... of dignity and honour. These things are going Henry and they may never come back to this world".) A prophetic line no doubt!

One of the great strengths of KINGS ROW is the outstanding operatic music score composed and conducted by the great Viennese composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Korngold's genius as a motion picture composer was not limited only to scoring action spectaculars like "The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938) and "The Sea Hawk" (1940) for he could, with no difficulty, underscore such character driven dramas as "Between Two Worlds" (1944), "Deception" (1946) and KINGS ROW with equal aplomb! Besides "The Sea Hawk" KINGS ROW is his finest achievement and of his 18 scores was his own personal favourite! His leitmotific approach to scoring could often be quite stunning and never more so than with KINGS ROW . The score is just chock-a-block with exquisite themes! Heard first under the titles is the powerful main theme. Brimming with bravura brass fanfares the piece is decidedly heroic! The composer - thinking the story concerned historical royalty because of its title - imbued the theme with a distinctive monarchical flavour. However when he saw the script and learnt the film was set in small-town USA he offered to change it but Hal Wallis liked it so much he persuaded the composer to retain the piece and a blessing it is too. Heard in different guises throughout the picture it is particularly engaging as a scherzo variation near the film's opening as the young Parris Mitchell and Cassandra Towers skip home by the river after school. Other superb cues are the poignant theme for the grandmother, the melancholy music for Cassie's ill attended birthday party, the frolicsome variation of the main theme for the children playing on the rings in Elroy's Icehouse, the ravishing theme for Randy and the Finale music - a reiteration of the main theme - which bursts forth upon us near the end but this time with a mixed chorus intoning a line from W. E. Henley's poem "Invictus" - I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE - I AM THE CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL. A marvellous soulful and uplifting ending to a marvellous film!

KINGS ROW - a work of cinematic art!

"Now...if you turn your face to that wall!"

An interesting footnote:

It is notable that Korngold's main theme from KINGS ROW was used for both of Ronald Reagan's inaugurations!

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28 out of 38 people found the following comment useful :-
A Fine Drama From The Golden Age of Movies, 10 January 2005

Author: Art La Cues from Independence, CA USA

"Kings Row" is truly a gem. The acting, photography,direction, script, and memorable score are outstanding. A number of reviewers have criticized Robert Cummings as not being up to the role of Parris Michell. I have to disagree. His earnestness and sincerity are what I appreciate in his characterization which is central to the storyline. Claude Rains, Harry Davenport, Ronald Reagan, and especially Ann Sheridan are outstanding in supporting roles.

I am not an "old geezer", a phrase used by Ronald Reagan in describing Dr. Gordon, who appreciates films from the 30's and 40's; unless being 59 qualifies me as such. I find myself viewing this movie several times a year on tape and Turner Classic Movies. Korngold's theme is truly one of the five top film themes. This is a sensitive and entertaining movie which stands the test of time.

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23 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
The Unbearable Complexity of Being, 28 July 1999
Author: Dibyaduti Purkayastha (tipup@hotmail.com) from Delhi

I have never been to America, but this movie seems so familiar. It reminds me so much of the apartment building I grew up in Calcutta. Maybe because people everywhere are essentially the same, or maybe because every character in this movie is a carefully thought out archetype. The Good Grandson who is the apostle of virtue, the Sacrificing Best Friend, the Spunky Girl, the men who live on the wrong side of the tracks but are still nobler than the rich old townspeople, the Old Man with Something to Hide, the Evil Man with an Honorable Facade, etc. In fact just the crowd u'd meet anywhere u live. That's what, I feel, gives this movie its timelessness. Add to it James Wong Howe's lustrous b&w photography like an old family photo polished everyday by the doting old maid, the assured editing that pieces together scenes straddling across time [Parris, the good little boy to Parris the good young man] & space [Americana to Vienna, like the new year msg in Parris' letter from Vienna dissolving into another msg scratched out on the snow in King's Row], Sam Wood's confident direction [he had done 'Our Town' too] & brilliant all round acting. Reagan blew my mind & so did Anne Sheridan. Wish Robert Cummings was less wimpy, but you can't take it all, can you?

A great movie, see it!

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21 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
A truly classic masterpiece from Hollywood's golden age!, 28 February 2005
Author: (DommyCommy57@aol.com) from New York

Kings Row in my opinion is one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Why it wasn't it on the American Film Institutes 100 films of all time is beyond me and another weird thing why wasn't its star the beautiful and talented Ann Sheridan among their greatest stars of all time is another crime. Ronald Reagan gives the performance of his entire career. The rest of the cast is first-rate as well. Robert Cummings is good but is the weakest character for me. Betty Field is very good in her small part. The supporting cast which includes Charles Coburn, Claude Rains, Maria Ouspenkaya and Kaaren Verne are all sensational. The music and the cinematography are incredible. Sam Wood directed a truly Gothic melodrama. The black and white photography is so gloriously rich. I am waiting anxiously for this to come out on DVD. In 1942 this film should have gotten a lot of nominations and won some. Best picture, actor, actress, director, supporting actor, supporting actress and screenplay and also cinematography and musical score. I think it did actually get a best picture nomination come to think of it. If you never saw this film, you must look out for it and Ann Sheridan in her finest hour.

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19 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
Classic, with Reagan's Question, "Where's the Rest of Me?", 22 February 2004
Author: Ben Burgraff (cariart) from Las Vegas, Nevada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

KING'S ROW, based on Henry Bellamann's huge, "unfilmable" novel, served as a showcase for many of Warner Brothers' rising stars of 1942, and has achieved 'classic' status over the years. It provided Ronald Reagan with his finest performance (he even entitled a pre-Presidential autobiography "Where's the Rest of Me?", from his most famous line of dialog from the film), moved Ann Sheridan to the "A-List" of WB stars, and offered one of the most memorable musical themes in film history, by composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The story of a group of children growing up in a small community prior to the turn of the century, and the adults they would become, screenwriter Casey Robinson infuses the youngsters' escapades with an innocence that makes their actions (performing acrobatics in their underwear in a freight car, a nude 'dip' in a local pond) seem sweet, not naughty. The 'leader' of the children, Drake McHugh (Douglas Croft/Ronald Reagan) is a rich, likable rogue, popular with girls, but most devoted to his best friend, serious Parris Mitchell (Scotty Beckett/Robert Cummings), a gifted piano student living with his grandmother (the remarkable Maria Ouspenskaya), who dreams of someday becoming a doctor. The girls in their lives are Randy Monaghan (Ann Todd/Ann Sheridan), a good-hearted girl from the 'wrong side of the tracks'; Louise Gordon (Joan Duvalle/Nancy Coleman), boy-crazy, and the most popular girl in town; and mysterious Cassandra 'Cassie' Tower (Mary Thomas/Betty Field), who Parris secretly adores, the daughter of the reclusive Dr. Tower (Claude Rains). After a disastrous party that only Parris and a few 'undesirables' attend (everyone else opts for a party at Louise's home), the heartbroken Cassie is yanked from school and isolated, under suspicious circumstances, by Dr. Tower. Parris grows to adulthood, still carrying a torch for his 'lost love'.

With the children 'grown up', the major story lines begin. Parris studies medicine with Dr. Tower, prior to college in Vienna, and meets Cassie again; despite her bizarre behavior and paranoia, the pair renew their chaste affair, which ends in tragedy and death (mental illness is given as the reason in the film; in the book, incest was the cause). After Parris leaves for Vienna, Drake is swindled out of his fortune, becoming a hard-drinking bum until he is 'redeemed' by Randy, and begins working with her family at the train yards. One night, crates fall on Drake, and when the doctor (Charles Coburn), the father of Louise Gordon (who Drake supposedly 'deflowered'), arrives, the old physician sees an opportunity to extract revenge, and amputates both of Drake's legs. Knowing her father had unnecessarily 'punished' Drake unhinges Louise, and the anxious Randy, spiritually and physically crippled Drake, and schizophrenic Louise all await the return of Parris, now a certified physician specializing in psychiatry, from Vienna. Upon his shoulders would lie everyone's redemption and recovery.

Despite an overly earnest performance by Cummings (with some of the most flowery dialog ever recorded on film), KINGS ROW works, thanks to the wonderful performances of Reagan and Sheridan. The ending still packs a wallop, even after sixty years, and is truly moving.

This is a film NOT to be missed!

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21 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
DVD urgently needed, 1 June 2005

Author: forker from indiana university, bloomington, indiana

This is a wonderful film with one of the greatest musical scores Hollywood ever produced. Eric Wolfgang Korngold is a splendid composer, and this may be his best film score. And the star cast makes the film historically very important. All the major parts are beautifully done. I especially admire Claude Rains and Charles Coburn as the psychiatrist and the sadistic surgeon. The scenes at the beginning with the characters as children is also wonderfully nostalgic and evokes small-town life at the turn of the 20th century effectively. This is Ronald Reagan's best film. It is a disgrace that this film is not yet available on DVD. It would be a good candidate for inclusion in the Criterion series. When can we purchase this film on DVD?

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14 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Turn of the Century Soap Opera at its best!, 3 May 2001

Author: mark.waltz from New York City

One of the best remembered films of the 40's, "King's Row" has gotten more attention because of Ronald Reagen's "Where's the rest of me?" line than anything else in the film. Sixty years later, "King's Row" as a film holds an important place in American history for more reasons than just a famous line barked by a future American president.

The central character is Paris Mitchell (Robert Cummings), the epitome of goodness and virtue. Raised by his loving grandma (Maria Ouspenskaya) in a wealthy home, Paris has been taught to love beyond his social standing, and ends up giving back to society what his grandmother gave to him. The secondary lead is Drake McHugh (Reagen), a spunky young man who is Paris's best friend. Paris is sometimes too good to be believed; McHugh is a full-bodied character, supporting in status, who steals interest away from the lead.

Paris and Drake are surrounded by characters of all classes, good and bad, who have major impacts on their lives. Dr. Towers (Claude Rains) is a mysterious doctor (without any patients) who lives as a recluse thanks to the insanity of his wife. Towers' daughter, Cassie (Betty Field), loves Paris, but Towers does all he can to keep them apart while training Paris to become a doctor. Then, there is surgeon Dr. Gordon (Charles Coburn), seemingly good on the surface, but filled with a dark streak on the inside that would ultimately destroy Drake. His wife (Judith Anderson) supports him, but daughter Louise (Nancy Coleman) is desperately in love with Drake, and would do anything to be with him, even defying her parents.

A childhood chum, Randi Monahan (Ann Sheridan) is the spunky girl from the other side of the tracks who grows up to be a beautiful and kind woman. Drake's bankruptcy brings him and Randi together, while Paris goes off to Europe to study psychiatry after a tragic incident at Dr. Towers' house. During Paris' absence, Drake has an accident which Dr. Gordon is brought to. That night changes everyone's life forever.

Robert Cummings is not a poor actor, but certainly not one of the best out of Hollywood. Handsome Cummings tried to change his image with this film, but was totally outshined by Reagen who proved that with the right preparations, he could be an excellent actor. I am not a Ronald Reagen fan-politically or as an actor, but he is massively impressive here. His other film credits were filled with forgettable performances, but this one I must honesty say he was worthy of an Oscar nomination which he did not receive. Also worthy of a nomination was Ann Sheridan, even though she does not make her appearance until Paris leaves for Europe. Her strength and devotion to Drake give Sheridan the chance to stretch all of her acting muscles, and Sheridan does it impressively. Sheridan, unlike her male co-stars, did have a respectable list of acting credits, and it is a pity that she was never acknowledged during her lifetime for her talents.

As two different style of doctors, Rains and Coburn give two different styles of performances. Rains is quietly sensitive and filled with pain as to the torture he feels concerning his wife and daughter; Coburn, on the other hand, has everything; a wife who loves him, and a seemingly strong daughter. However, once his dark side comes through, Coburn becomes absolutely hissable. Unlike Rains, whom we sympathize with, Coburn never once wins us over. Such a lovable actor in other films, he really had a different type of part here, and chews it up like a dog on a fresh steak bone!

Ouspenskaya always gives me chuckles in the wrong places. The scene where young Paris speaks French to her through the open windows of their home is laughabily over the top. Later, when Ouspenskaya is dying, she expresses such a over-the-top nobility that on several occassions, I found myself saying, "Would you just die already?" Wide-eyed Betty Field makes the most of a small part as Cassie Towers; Nancy Coleman's Louise Gordon goes from sane to psycho in such a short span that I can't help but wish there had been more to fill in what drove her there. Screen villainess Judith Anderson sadly is underused in her few scenes as Mrs. Gordon. I longed for her to have one truly evil scene, yet felt sympathy for her when she confided her fears of Louise's insanity to Paris Mitchell. Small appearances by Harry Davenport and Kaaren Verne are charming, yet undeveloped.

In spite of these faults, I find "King's Row" remains a favorite of mine, thanks to its delightfully charming yet gaudy small town atmosphere (reminding me of Ripley, New York-the small town I grew up in), the marvelous musical score, and the simply breathtaking photography. Strongest of all is Sam Wood's direction which makes the film flow smoothly from one sequence to the next. "King's Row" would have made an excellent daily soap opera, and in fact did appear briefly in the 50's as a prime time series.

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15 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Behind half closed curtains, 13 September 2003
Author: John Simpson (post@jandesimpson.wanadoo.co.uk) from Hastings, England

An interesting TV documentary on the composer Korngold drew me back to "Kings Row" Although I don't find his scores as arresting as those of Raksin or as immediately identifiable as Rozsa or Herrmann (Korngold's seem to be in a rather amorphous Richard Strauss style), I love his music to "Kings Row" which has a glorious lyrical sweep particularly in the credit section overture. Another reason for watching "Kings Row" today, although a minor one, is to see the only star who has made it to the White House in his best role and to marvel at how he could have done it - get to the White House I mean. Let's face it, Ronald Reagan was no great shakes as an actor but he was certainly at his best here, delivering his great and almost prophetic line, "Where's the rest of me?" as a cry of despair that certainly convinces. However, Korngold and Reagan are not the main reasons that I sometimes stray back to this film. The fact is that I am a sucker for Golden Age Hollywood melodrama and I find "Kings Row" just about the darkest of the genre and certainly one of the most fascinating. I was once taken to task for calling it "the greatest of all bad films" and although I still stand by this, as it is after all pure hokum, I would rather watch it than a multitude of intrinsically finer films I could name. In a way it was ahead of its time dealing with come pretty awful things such as inherited insanity, terminal cancer and sadistic medical practices in a way you would think would be a turn-off in the commercial cinema. Someone will no doubt put me right but I cannot recall the word "cancer" being spoken in a film before "Rebecca" and "Kings Row". Admittedly you do not see any of the gruesome goings on, just the medicines and syringes beside the cancer victim's bed and those faces half glimpsed at curtained windows of an insane woman and a doctor about to cut into a patient's ulcerated leg without chloroform. Even the famous leg amputation scene takes place off-stage, cutting off (excuse the dreadful pun) just after the ubiquitous Hollywood call for "lots of hot water". None the less there is sufficient balance between the dreadful happenings and human goodness to turn the film into the popular success it undoubtedly was in the early '40s, the mutual love between the hero (Robert Cummings) and his grandmother, the devotion through times good and bad of Ann Sheridan to Ronald Reagan and the unassailable friendship between Cummings and Reagan. The passing of seasons and years is poetically conveyed and there is even one great moment of transformation when a boy crosses a stile and climbs down the other side a man. What an extraordinary mixed bag it all is! Even the dialogue comes up with a few surprises. In what other Hollywood film of that time would one character - Claude Rains as the good doctor - say to another - his pupil, "I seem to be in a vein of epigramatic sententiousness today"! I remember one of my sons discovering "Kings Row" in his early twenties and declaring it one of the most wonderful films he had ever seen. I countered this by showing him what I feel to be the greatest film ever about family intrigue set in turn of the century small town America, Wyler's "The Little Foxes". To my dismay he did not stay the course. It did not take me long to realise why. "Foxes" is all about adults scheming and tormenting one another. For my son there was no point of identification. "Kings Row" on the other hand celebrates youthful camaraderie with liberal doses of the "youth-love-death" cocktail. It was no surprise that he went on to love "Dead Poets Society" but has expressed no wish to attempt "The Little Foxes" again.

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Where's The Rest of Me?, 6 April 2006

Author: krorie from Van Buren, Arkansas

For those who made fun of President Reagan's movie career by always citing "Bedtime for Bonzo" and laughing may be surprised if they take the time to watch "Kings Row." Even "Bedtime for Bonzo" is not as bad as those who have never seen it think it is, because of the ridiculous title. The former sports announcer plays Drake McHugh as well or better than any other Hollywood actor of the period could have. He stands tall among an extremely talented group of actors, including several others who have also been underrated and never received their due by the Hollywood establishment, especially Bob Cummings and Ann Sheridan. There's also Judith Anderson of "Rebecca" fame; Claude Rains who first made a name for himself in a part were he was invisible through most of the film; Charles Coburn, the grand old man of 40's cinema, playing against type in "Kings Row" as not such a grand old man; Maria Ouspenskaya in a non-horror role; and Betty Field shines as the tortured soul, Cassie.

Sam Wood's magnificent direction plus the acting keep the story from slipping into soap opera melodrama. True heart-rending sentiment rather than sappy sentimentality emerges from the social and economic conflicts that mix with human kindness and cruelty in small-town America at the turn of the last century. Though there is an element of nostalgia for a vanishing America, it never becomes petty or commonplace.

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
When I had something amputated....., 5 June 2004
Author: Anita de Acosta Keith (g_keith@sbcglobal.net) from Columbus, Ohio USA

I had to have a mastectomy 6 years ago on April 7, 1998, upon diagnosis with malignant breast cancer. I was devastated, but had to do it to save my life. Before the surgery, I kept thinking of Ronald Reagan (Drake) in "King's Row") -- one of my favorite classic movies of all time. When Drake woke up (from having both his legs amputated) and he asked, "Where's the rest of me?," it broke my heart.

I also thought my surgeon would make a mistake and remove both breasts, and I would be a double amputee like Drake. Well, this did not happen, but still I remembered the crooked doctor from "King's Row."

Before my own surgery, I thought I would say the same thing when I woke up from the anesthesia. When I woke up, I was exactly like Drake. All I could see were bandages, and I was in a lot of pain. Only 1 breast was missing, thankfully. I had several pieces of equipment hooked up to me in the recovery room, but all I could ask was, "Where's the rest of me?"

So now, Ronald Reagan is terminally ill, and dying soon, according to the internet news I just read. I loved him as Drake in "King's Row", and he was the inspiration for my courage during my surgery (I have had plenty of other surgeries since then, too).

He is 93 years old. I remember him as a young man in "King's Row", and it will break my heart whenever I next see that movie.

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