User Reviews

This is such an unusual film. You've got a girl of unnameable age (Ginger Rogers as Ellie) who is apparently old enough to get married but young enough to pull off looking twelve or thirteen merely by dressing the part and putting her hair in pigtails. Why would she put on this ruse? She gives several excuses but it's probably seeing the effect of men on the lives and characters of her mother and grandmother. Mom is currently a prostitute supporting a husband for which she feels obligation but no longer love. Ellie has an alcoholic father who apparently is long on education but short on the stuff that enables people to face up to life, and knowing how and why his wife makes a living as she does just deepens his cycle of alcoholism. Then there is grandma that takes the cake but would never be caught baking one. She's a retired prostitute and loves talking "shop" with her daughter, Ellie's mom.

So of course Ellie would never want to cross the threshold to adolescence. And then one day she meets diner worker Ed Wallace (Joel McCrea). Unable to tell her true age, Ed partly kids with her and partly flirts. In Ed Ellie sees what she has never found at home - someone with humor, who makes her laugh, who - not knowing her family - accepts her. In Ellie, Ed sees a freshness and sense of naiveté he can't find in his cannery row dates at the café, even though he seems to enjoy their bawdiness.

So here we have a couple in which both parties are of equivalent classes as far as income, but worlds apart in where that income originates. Romances are common from this era in which one party is hiding a past that they think will disrupt the relationship if it is discovered. This one is different because it is the girl's family that is of ill repute - the girl herself has done nothing wrong with one exception - she basically tricks Ed into marrying her by telling him a pack of lies about her fictitious strict family.

It's a very heart-warming film, not overly melodramatic, and has fine performances from all the supporting cast as well as Rogers and McCrea who display great chemistry despite the fact that their characters' romance appears to come out of nowhere. Plus it has a quite unlikely hero in the matchmaker who reconciles the young couple - one highly insightful "John" who maybe really did love Ellie's mom after all, knew what she was up against, and didn't want to see history repeat itself in her daughter. I highly recommend it.

"Primrose Path" is actually a rather daring film for its day. Young Giner Rogers has grown up in a home with a rather disgusting grandmother, an alcoholic father, and a mother who seems a bit loose. In reality, although it's not too obvious, grandmother and mother were prostitutes. Quite by chance, Ginger Rogers meets Joel McCrae and they soon realize they are in love and they get married. But, Rogers hides her family from McCrea due to her embarrassment. But, sooner or later McCrea has to meet them, and when he does it's a disaster and he dumps his wife because of all the lies, despite the fact that they were happy together (along with McCrea's father, who lives with them...played by Henry Travers). Eventually they realize they still love each other, but only after tragedy hits the family and Rogers nearly becomes a prostitute herself.

Marjorie Rambeau, who played the mother, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this film. Miles Mander, who plays the alcoholic father, is excellent. Queenie Vassar as the grandmother...well, I was not impressed, but perhaps it was her role that was so disgusting. Henry Travers...excellent and perfect, as always.

A small, but interesting role in the film is Charles Lane, who plays a likable "John Smith" who hires Rogers as his "date", but ends up getting the two lovers back together. Usually he plays a skinflint, but here he is rather likable in a very different role.

This is really a very good and under-appreciated film. The topics were racy at the time, but really come together well, and there is plenty of social commentary here, as well. Highly recommended.

The above quote is how this excellent melodrama starts, at it really sets the tone for the rest of the film. "Primrose Path" does a fantastic job of illustrating the lengths a person can be driven to out of sheer desperation. Ginger Rogers' acting in this film is hard to put into words. It's simply perfect. Her portrayal is at once completely natural, yet incredibly nuanced. Two scenes, in particular, when her husband leaves and when her mother dies, are excellent examples of acting at its best. Another of Rogers' films, "Kitty Foyle", released the same year, garnered more attention, mainly because it was a based on a hugely popular book, while "Primrose Path" was highly controversial. Personally, I think Rogers should have won the Oscar for this film, instead of "Kitty Foyle". I highly recommend "Primrose Path". However, be forewarned. While there is no outright violence or sex, this is not a family film, as it deals with very adult themes, such as poverty, alcoholism, and prostitution.

Though made in 1940, PRIMROSE PATH has the distinct feeling of a pre-Code movie. Living in the slums of what seems to be Monterrey, a poor family survives by way of prostitution. The grandmother (Queenie Vassar), a nasty, crusty old soul, is long past that life but seems to remember it well and with no apologies to anyone. The mother (Marjorie Rambeau) is the active member, aided by her friend Thelma, a high class call girl rather than a street hooker, but the mother, basically kind and generous, is herself getting very long in the tooth for this sort of thing. On deck is a girl of about seventeen (Ginger Rogers) for whom grandma has high hopes, or one might say low hopes, of continuing the family tradition, but Ellie May seems resistant to the idea and shields herself by acting and dressing younger than she is, i.e., prepubescent. There are also a younger daughter, too young to fully understand what is going on but enthusiastically taking grandma as a role model, and a hopelessly drunk father, college-educated but only the more pathetic for it.

They'd make a reality show out of the Adams family today! PRIMROSE PATH is the story of Ellie May's attempt to escape from the trap life has set her by way of a gas station/restaurant owner (Joel McCrea). Ellie is quick-witted and likable, but scrupulous honesty is not one of her virtues. Big Ed (McCrea) is also likable, as well as hard-working and generous, and it must be said, extremely gullible. It's a match made half in heaven and half in hell.

In the opening scene, Ellie's father practically begs his daughter to leave her home while there's still time. Her demeanor is already one of quiet depression. She seems consciously to have been avoiding growing up, particularly as boys are concerned. She now meets Ed, and after considerable back-and-forth banter receives her first kiss. She's not so honest that she defers from lifting Ed's wallet when the opportunity presents itself, but she doesn't want him to really get into trouble, either, so she gives it back to prevent his being arrested. He accepts her lame story as to how she'd gotten his wallet without question. Ed rarely questions anything that he's told by others.

This puts ideas into Ellie's mind. She decides to dress up as a 'lady' and go to Ed at the Bluebell Cafe. She finds her mother positively encouraging her to go to this man. Now both parents have essentially told her to get out while she can. In a very complicated scene on the docks, Ellie 'seduces' Ed. She tells him that her parents have thrown her out because she liked him. Naturally, he's nonplussed. When she asks him to take her with him, Ed replies that he's not ready for marriage yet. The word 'marriage' seems to jolt Ellie, who probably hasn't been thinking in terms of such an honorable estate. She turns very sincere for a few moments (with a subtle use of the musical score to underline the change), but as Ed remains resistant, Ellie turns to a reenactment of some melodramatic scene that she'd likely seen in some B- movie. Ellie prepares to jump off the pier, then faints dead away into Ed's arms when he stops her. Next scene is a few weeks later,and they're married!

We'll learn much later that the two haven't had a proper honeymoon, but it's clear already that their wedding night had gone just fine. It's the paradise of young love, but this love is based on lies, and all that is going to have to be resolved for the movie to end happily. Cinderella's godmother will turn out to be one 'Mr. Hawkins', and La Cava has prepared for his ending more carefully than is often allowed:

We first hear of him when Mamie returns home and laughs that one 'Mr. Hawkins' had actually wanted to marry her! "He's a card," Mamie and her mother agree, and on Mamie's part it's with some affection;

A passing remark tells us that Mr. Hawkins has actually paid for Mamie's funeral, an indication of sincerity if there ever was one;

So when Thelma was looking to break Ellie May into the business, she no doubt wanted it to be with a client who was a nice fellow. And it would be rather fitting that someone who had, in his way, loved Mamie Adams would also be the man to do Mamie's daughter this favor (by Thelma's lights, anyway). So Thelma set up Ellie May with a 'Mr. Smith' who was actually Mr. Hawkins, and doubtlessly used a false name for Ellie as well. So Mr. Hawkins didn't know who he was with until Ed talked to him in the Bluebell, with Ellie's husband showing considerable remorse about the whole affair. That Mr. Hawkins would now try to do what's best for Mamie's daughter goes without saying. The happy ending to PRIMROSE PATH has been, I think, very logically prepared.

The movie expresses enormous compassion for its humble characters. Beyond La Cava's efforts, we have universally strong performances from its cast members, perhaps most flashily from Queenie Vassar and Oscar nominee Marjorie Rambeau, but the heart of the film are Joel McCrea, showing more emotional pain than usual, and especially Ginger Rogers in what is, I think, her finest dramatic effort. Her character passes from pseudo-childishness to emotional maturity to threatened spiritual callousness, and Ginger makes it seem natural all the way. Innocence and dishonesty is not an easy combination to pull off, but it is an interesting one. I'm not the first to believe that PRIMROSE PATH had a lot to do with her subsequent Academy Award.

Ginger Rogers is a tough kid just out of high school who wears pigtails and mannish clothes and comes from the ironically named Primrose neighborhood -- all shacks and ditches and dusty roads. She runs into Joel McRead, an ordinary guy who works and lives at the gas station in town, and they spend a day digging clams at the beach. She tells him nothing of her background, and they gradually fall for each other.

And what a family she has! Mother is savvy enough in her own rough-hewn way. The little sister is cynical and ill mannered. Father -- the reliable Miles Mander -- is an educated drunk who is always about to write the definitive history of Ancient Greece on a diminutive table using a handful of books from the library. Grandma caps them all. She hates anything soft, anything that is redolent of romance or of any emotion but dislike. She teaches little sister poems with titles like, "Don't smack your Maw." Rogers runs away from home and surrenders to McRae on the pier behind the Blue Belle Saloon. She signals her sacrifice by fainting dramatically in McRae's arms. (The good man hold her slack body and he looks around, wonderingly, as if puzzling over what to do next.) Anyway, they're married and Rogers happily works behind the lunch counter at the gas station -- staying as far away as possible from the Primrose Path -- but McRae pushes it and Rogers finally takes him to meet her family, which turns out to be a disaster.

It's basically a depression story, though released in 1940. Everybody is poor -- except maybe Ma's frequent interludes with variously named "Uncles." The Depression Play must have been a popular genre at the time. "Dead End" was a big success on the stage, although it seems schematic now on the screen. Double negatives and "aint"s abound in the dialog and the expression "You'd better had" appears regularly.

It's also a romantic drama and not entirely convincing. McRae is a sensible character but he believes the lies that Grandma tells him rather than the well-intended and even charming fantasies that come from his new wife. It's unworthy of him.

I kept wondering too what kind of town this is. It's obviously not a city. It's more like Cannery Row or Pismo Beach than anything else, and yet the working-class McRae and the down-and-outers of Primrose Path have remained strangers to one another all their lives.

Fortunately, it ends happily, although a gun shot wound is involved and Pa remains a dipsomaniac. Well, it will all work out, now that Rogers and McRae have come to terms with the limits of her background.

After a decade after scoring in comic and musical roles, Ginger Rogers moved onto dramatic parts with her Oscar Winning role in "Kitty Foyle" and this artistic sleeper which shows her dramatic side to equal zeal. She is a poor girl whose father is a drunk and whose mother is an aging prostitute. Untrustful of men, she disguises herself as a teenager, but after an afternoon with the happy-go- lucky Joel McCrea, she changes her tube, her looks, her demeanor. But even as a happily married woman, she can't escape her family history, and an encounter between McCrea and her clan leads to his disgust and trouble in paradise.

Marjorie Rambeau received much praise for her performance as Rogers' mother, an aging glamour girl who is in an unhappy marriage and tries to escape the wretchedness of her existence with monetary favors from other men. She goes from tough to tender to winsome and regretful with little ease. Queenie Vassar threatens to walk away with the picture as Rambeau's crude mother, a very miserable creature whose actions have lead to everybody's misery.

The lovable Henry Travers offers warm wisdom as the restaurant owner who encounters Rogers and calms her wariness by saying, "I'm just an old hunk of buzzard bait." By mixing comedy into the drama (the typical Ginger wise-cracks), this reveals the restlessness of this family and reveals the sadness underneath. Rogers and McCrea are a gorgeous couple. I can see why this mo not have succeeded because it can be rather depressing at times. But it is closer to reality than many films of the time and really touches the heart.

This one is a real treat. Lots of great exteriors. The location shooting was either done down by Santa Monica along the coast or else they actually went to Salinas (the setting is obviously meant to be Salinas with the canning industry and reference to the Portuguese workers and proximity to San Francisco). It's very atmospheric. And the theme is indeed rather shocking for 1940 (the mother running around with this other guy while her self-loathing alcoholic husband drinks himself nearly to death - and of course, she has to die in the end which isn't exactly a spoiler since this is a production code era Hollywood movie). Lots of great dialogue and wild characters. Joel McCrea's part is pretty typical but Ginger Rogers gets some tremendous lines and the supporting cast is surprisingly strong.

The best supporting actress nomination should not have gone to Marjorie Rambeau as the sacrificing mother, but rather to Queenie Vassar, who played the loud-mouth, full-of-opinions, nasty, vicious grandmother in the film. That woman caused more trouble than one could think of.

Ginger Rogers tries to rise above the level of poverty and desperation living in a run-down shack with an alcoholic father, the latter only having his dreams as memories, her self-sacrificing mother who sells herself as a tramp to earn money, a much younger sister being used to being catered to and a cantankerous grandmother.

A chance meeting with a stranger, Joel McCrea, leads to a quick romance and marriage, but Ellie Mae's inability to come clean with her family to McCrea causes the marriage to fall apart when he finds out. Furthermore, the actions of a vicious grandmother helps the break-up along.

Tragedy and love conquers all both help for a happy resolution to this film.