No Sad Songs for Me *** (1950, Margaret Sullavan, Wendell Corey, Viveca Lindfors, Natalie Wood) – Classic Movie Review 7950

Director Rudolph Maté’s 1950 drama No Sad Songs for Me is Margaret Sullavan’s swansong in the movies. It is aptly the story of a terminally ill mother, Mary Scott (Sullavan), who will not tell her straying husband Brad (Wendell Corey) and daughter Polly (Natalie Wood) that she is dying of an incurable disease and has only ten months to live, but instead shows them how to continue when she is gone by ingratiating them with another woman, Brad’s assistant, Chris Radna (Viveca Lindfors).

Based on the novel by Ruth Southard, Maté’s movie is a well-played, high-class weepie in the style of Sullavan’s pictures in her Thirties heyday. This final role was her first picture in seven years – she had not filmed since Cry ‘Havoc’ in 1943 – and it captures the essence of Sullavan’s attractive, idealistic personality.

One-time wife of Henry Fonda and William Wyler, she entered a sanatorium in 1956 and died of a drug overdose in a hotel room in 1960, possibly a suicide, though the county coroner ruled her death accidental.

Also in the cast are Viveca Lindfors, John McIntire, Ann Doran, Richard Quine, Jeanette Nolan, Dorothy Tree, Raymond Greenleaf, Urylee Leonardos, Harlan Warde, Margo Woods, Harry Cheshire, Douglas Evans, Sumner Getchell, Lucile Browne, Hank Patterson, Myron Healey, John Berkes, Paul E Burns, Louis Mason and Maudie Prickett.

No Sad Songs for Me is directed by Rudolph Maté, runs 89 minutes, is made and released by Columbia, is written by Howard Koch, based on the novel by Ruth Southard, is shot in black and white by Joseph Walker, is produced by Buddy Adler, is scored by George Duning and is designed by Cary Odell.

George Duning was Oscar nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Forgotten star Margaret Sullavan (1909–1960) made only 16 films between 1933 and 1943, including The Good Fairy (1935), Three Comrades (1938), The Shopworn Angel (1938), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Back Street (1941).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7950

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