From This Day Forward *** (1946, Joan Fontaine, Mark Stevens, Rosemary DeCamp) – Classic Movie Review 12,307

From This Day Forward (1946, Joan Fontaine).

Joan Fontaine stars in 1946 drama film From This Day Forward, a work of the postwar left wing. The film might be optimistic but soon director John Berry and screenwriter Hugo Butler were Hollywood blacklist victims.

Bill Cummings (Mark Stevens): ‘You’ll make a beautiful bride.’

Susan (Joan Fontaine): ‘All brides are beautiful…’

Director John Berry’s optimistic 1946 romantic war drama From This Day Forward stars Joan Fontaine and Mark Stevens, who engage the emotions and are very appealing as a young New York City tenement couple readjusting their lives when married US Army sergeant Bill Cummings (Stevens) returns from war service in World War Two. As incidents of his prewar life are recalled in flashback, se is seen meeting and marrying his wife Susan (Fontaine) in 1938, so the story is partly set in the past of the year before the war and partly set in the present with the husband’s coming home.

This well-acted, extremely competent soap opera consistently hits the target, though it is not quite in the class of the same year’s similarly themed The Best Years of Our Lives. The flashback-ridden script agreeably mixes sentimentality and realism and it is handled with craftsmanlike relish, while the optimistic audience-pleasing buttons are all pushed relentlessly and successfully.

There is no need to be put off by the original novel’s title, the 1936 All Brides Are Beautiful by Thomas Bell. He was a working-class immigrant writer and this film is a work of the postwar left wing. That proved dangerous. The film might be optimistic but these were pessimistic times. Director Berry and screenwriter Hugo Butler were soon both Hollywood blacklist victims, while uncredited writer Clifford Odets was a HUAC friendly witness.

Berry was born Jak Szold in The Bronx, with a Polish-Jewish father and a Romanian mother. Berry had joined the Communist Party during the Spanish Civil War and was named a communist to the HUAC by fellow directors and former Communist Party members Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle. Berry went into exile in France.

Dmytryk named Berry and 25 other alleged communists to the HUAC and resumed his Hollywood career. Tuttle gave 36 names to the HUAC.

The title song is by Mort Greene (lyrics) and Leigh Harline (music), sung by Doreen Tryden (uncredited).

Also Rosemary DeCamp, Harry Morgan, Wally Brown, Arline Judge, Bobby Driscoll, Mary Treen, Renny McEvoy, Queenie Smith, Doreen McCann, Erskine Sandford, Ellen Corby, George Magrill, Jack Gargan, Tom Noonan, Moroni Olsen, Ralph Dunn, Ida Moore, Nan Leslie, Milton Kibbee, and Charles Wagenheim.

From This Day Forward is directed by John Berry, runs 96 minutes, is made and released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Hugo Butler (screenplay), Garson Kanin (adaptation), Clifford Odets (uncredited), Edith R Sommer and Charles Schnee, is shot by George Barnes, is produced by Jack J Gross (executive producer), William L Pereira (producer), and scored by Leigh Harline and Constantin Bakaleinikoff.

It is shot in New York City and at RKO Studios, 780 N. Gower Street, Hollywood.

It was premiered on March 27, 1946, and went on to make a profit of $362,000.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,307

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