Tender Comrade (1943)

Director:

Edward Dmytryk

Writer:

Dalton Trumbo (written by)

Release Date:

June 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Ginger Rogers, a young defense plant worker whose husband is in the military during World War II, shares...

Plot Keywords:

Marriage | Democracy | Friendship Between Women | Cat | German

Cast

Ginger Rogers	...	Jo Jones
Robert Ryan	...	Chris Jones
Ruth Hussey	...	Barbara Thomas
Patricia Collinge	...	Helen Stacey
Mady Christians	...	Manya Lodge
Kim Hunter	...	Doris Dumbrowski
Jane Darwell	...	Mrs. Henderson
Richard Martin	...	Mike Dumbrowski

Runtime:

102 min (copyright length) | 101 min (Turner library print)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #9586) | USA:TV-PG (TV rating)

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

Although there was a Los Angeles premiere on December 19, 1943 to make the film eligible for the 1943 Academy Awards - particularly Ginger Rogers' performance, which would fail to be nominated - the movie was not released nationally until June 1944. After the Los Angeles opening, new footage which altered the ending was shot between January 7 and 9 and then on January 20, 1944.

Quotes:

Chris Jones: Y'know, I've been thinking...
Jo Jones: There you go exaggerating again!

Movie Connections:

Featured in "The Century" (1999)

Soundtrack:

When Johnny Comes Marching Home

A Great Movie and a Lousy Movie All In One

This is the type of movie for which the fast-forward function was invented, as parts of this movie have both fine writing and fine acting, and other parts are dreadful propaganda. The story is simple. Ginger Rogers, husband to soldier Robert Ryan, convinces her other pals working at the war plant to move in together, and pool their assets. The story of Robert Ryan and Ginger is told through flashbacks, scattered randomly through the tale of how five working women manage to live together, even when spouting impossible dialog at each other.

The scenes between Rogers and Ryan are well-written and finely acted. Trumbo and the actors capture (most unusually for almost any movie) how a generally happy marriage works and how a quarrel might develop. Watch the scenes where these two are together. They are (mostly) free of the propaganda that does not age well.

The rest of the movie. Well, the characters are types and serve as mouthpieces for the "We must sacrifice for the war effort" line being sold by the movie. If one is looking for preposterous moments of the cinema, one can flip forward to the scene where our group home's housekeeper gets in a rage because the butcher slipped an extra piece of bacon in the order. (Followed by a confession of hoarding by one of the girls in the house. Followed by an anti-foreigner tirade by the most ethically challenged of the group residents.) There is some decent 'ol fashioned movie rhetoric in this part, but, mostly, this section is hokum.