Bright Leaf **** (1950, Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall, Patricia Neal, Donald Crisp, Jack Carson, Gladys George) – Classic Movie Review 6309

Cast against type, Gary Cooper stars effectively as ruthlessly ambitious outsider Brant Royle in director Michael Curtiz’s sparky, surprisingly little-known 1950 film of Victorian Texas tobacco-growing folk who spend most of their time wrecking marriages, lives and businesses. In a history of the tobacco industry, Brant decides to mass produce cigarettes in 1894, upsetting Kingsmont’s aristocratic tobacco growers. I guess it is the tobacco subject and mass production of cigarettes theme that has largely consigned this movie to the ashtray of history.

[Spoiler alert] Cooper has strong competition here in this energetic cast. There is especially good fun to be had from the fiery Patricia Neal as Cooper’s vengeful nemesis Margaret Singleton, effortlessly scene stealing in a top cast as she plots to get her own back on Cooper for the suicide of her father, magnate Major Singleton (Donald Crisp). Cooper and Lauren Bacall (as bordello keeper Sonia Kovac) work well together as the cavalier, determined-to-make-good tobacco entrepreneur and rich investor he really loves.

Though it is a pity that Ranald MacDougall’s screenplay, based on the novel by Foster Fitz-Simmons, tends to ramble and that Curtiz’s direction is so unfocused (also surprisingly), the movie remains highly entertaining throughout, with the fine cast on their best form, and ace cinematographer Karl Freund makes it look great in stylish black and white.

Also in the cast are Jack Carson, Gladys George, Elizabeth Patterson, Jeff Corey, Taylor Holmes, Thurston Hall, Jimmy Griffith, Marietta Canty, William Walker, Ira Buck Woods, Chalky Williams, Kermit Whitfield, Nita Talbot, John Pickard, Eddie Parks, Paul Newlan, Cleo Moore, Charles Meredith, Celia Lovsky, Lyle Latell, Leslie Kimmell, Hubie Kerns, Pete Kellett, J Louis Johnson, Jessie Lee Hunt, James Griffith, Pat Goldin, Pat Flaherty, Elzie Emanuel, Renee De Vaux, Boyd Davis, Chick Chandler, Marshall Bradford, Shelby Bacon and James Adamson.

The 110-minute Warner Bros movie is produced by Henry Blanke, scored by Victor Young and Max Steiner, and designed by Stanley Fleischer. Film editor: Owen Marks.

Neal, who had a three year romance with Cooper, wanted Bacall’s role, but Warner Bros turned her down.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6309

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