One Man’s Journey ** (1933, Lionel Barrymore, May Robson, Dorothy Jordan, Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Buster Phelps) – Classic Movie Review 10,488

Director John S Robertson’s sentimental 1933 RKO Radio Pictures black and white drama One Man’s Journey stars Lionel Barrymore as Eli Watt, a canny, but selfless old doctor who returns to his sleepy hometown from a career in New York and sorts out the emotional and medical problems of its inhabitants.

He raises his son Jimmy (Buster Phelps at age six, then Joel McCrea as an adult), as well as Letty (Dorothy Jordan), a baby whose mother has died in childbirth. He does good in the town, although he does not achieve his life’s wider ambitions.

One Man’s Journey is a slight but well-produced melodrama with a strong moral element to it, typical of RKO’s attitudes in the 30s. Superior acting and direction lift this above the level of the average American small-town story.

Barrymore acts impressively and grounds the piece in crusty reality, in one of the eight (!) films he starred in that busy year for him of 1933. He joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1926 and was MGM boss Louis B Mayer’s favourite actor, though this is made by RKO Radio Pictures. He remained a contract player with MGM for nearly 30 years until his death in 1954, though, as here, he occasionally was loaned out.

Also in the cast are May Robson as feisty volunteer housekeeper Sarah, Dorothy Jordan, Joel McCrea, Frances Dee as Joan Stockton, David Landau, James Bush, Buster Phelps, Oscar Apfel, Samuel S Hinds and Hale Hamilton.

The screenplay is by Lester Cohen and Samuel Ornitz, based on the story Failure by Katharine Haviland-Taylor.

It is remade in 1938 as A Man to Remember.

Joel McCrea was married to Frances Dee from 1933 till his death in 1990. They met on the set of the 1933 film The Silver Cord, had a whirlwind courtship and were married later that same year.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,488

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