A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Read the Book or See the Movie?

 

This summer I had the great pleasure of rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  It's a book that I've read at least twice before and I might have gotten around to reading it again someday, but Engie made that day now by launching The Cool Bloggers Book Club. 

My first encounter with ATGIB was the 1945 movie, which I saw sometime in my early teens.  Later on I found the book at a library book sale which is how I came to read it and the rest is history.  I remembered the movie as being OK but not great and wouldn't have been interested in rewatching it except that I wanted to get a little more juice out of the ATGIB squeeze.

I'm going to tell you what I remembered about the movie going in, how the movie is different from the book, what I thought about the actors, and what I thought of the movie.

Full spoilers ahead, so don't click past the jump unless you want in on the deets.  It's totally OK to pause and come back after you've read the book and/or seen the movie.

What I Remembered Besides Not Much

I remembered...a forgettable movie.  I kind of remembered that the actress who played Katie was a little prissy and uptight, I didn't remember Francie at all, but boy did I remember Sissy.  In fact, my memory was that the ATGIB movie was The Sissy Show and yes I mean that in a good way.  The memory was so strong that on every reading of the book, I experience all of the non-Sissy characters based on a what I read on the page, but once Sissy shows up all that I see is Joan Blondell.

Story wise, I knew that a lot of stuff was taken out of the book.  In 1945 movies you just don't have the fun aunt who gives you condoms to play with, you never get your period, and you never get snatched by perverts.  I didn't remember Francie's climb from 8th grade graduate to factory worker to newsreader, but I also didn't really remember Francie.

How the Movie is Different From the Book

The first thing that I was surprised to see was that the movie is over two hours long, which is pretty long for the time.  If I think about my go-to favorite 1940's movies - ex: Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, etc - those all fall around the one hour 40 minute mark.

The movie takes place over the course of a year.  After a title card that tells us that we're in the "Brooklyn of a few decades ago" we start in the same place that the book started with Francie and Neeley's Saturday and the story ends the following spring on the night that Francie and Neeley graduate from the 8th grade.

Bullet points:

• If Evy was your favorite sister, you're out of luck.  She and Uncle Willie were dropped from the movie.
  
• Flossie and Henny Gaddis are combined into one character - a sick little girl who's just made a new dress.  She wants to show off her new dress, but Katie only notices that she's not sick.  Johnny makes a big deal over the dress and makes her feel special.  A few scenes later the Nolans are told that Flossie has died, which foreshadows Johnny's death.
• Sissy doesn't call her husbands John.  She calls them Bill!  I'm assuming that the censors were trying to steer away from "John" in the prostitute sense.  The movie is careful not to quantify the number of husbands and doesn't really tell you about the dead babies until just before Sissy gives birth.  Sissy believes that her previous marriage is invalid because she hasn't heard from her husband in seven years.  The story line of the adopted baby also doesn't make the movie.
• There was no such thing as a baby bump in a 1945 movie.  After the first few months of pregnancy Katie and Sissy just happen to be wearing shapeless coats in every scene until their babies are born.
• Book Katie sacrifices everything to make sure that Francie graduates 8th grade.  Movie Katie is all for Francie dropping out of school so that the family will have an income while she's off work having the baby.
• McShane's wife and Johnny die around the same time.
• The babies get born just in time for Sissy and Katie to be back on their feet for graduation.  They take the kids out afterwards for ice cream, and when they get home they find that Steve has invited McShane over to help him babysit the new babies.  Steve and Sissy leave, McShane proposes and Katie accepts (in the same passionless way as the book), and Francie and Neeley go up on the roof and reflect on the last year and conclude that Laurie will have a way easier childhood than they did.  The End.
  

The Actors

ATGIB was a Big Deal, the movie was a Big Deal, and the casting was an Even Bigger Deal.

The original trailer for ATGIB is dreadful - you know I love my old movies but woof old movie trailers stink.  It's two solid minutes of "we're a Big Deal" with precious few clips of the movie, but it does give us some faces to put with the names (PS I tried to get the clip to start at 1:15 which is when the cast is shown but for some reason Blogger isn't having it...just click to 1:15 to get to the point...let me tell you it's a very long 1:15 minutes).

Listed in the order that they appear in the trailer with McGarity tacked on at the end:

Katie - I'm on the fence with the way Katie's role was executed.  Book Katie is a complex character and some of this made it into the movie but the rest of the time she's prissy and uptight.  It's a messy thing for an actor to deal with, and a bit of an uneven performance IMO.

Sissy - what more can I say than YES YES YES YES YES.  You need to understand that Joan Blondell's movie career started in the early 30s when the studios were trying to dig out of the Depression by flooding the theaters with movies.  It was a time of quantity, not of great character development and acting, so she was stuck playing the Chorus Girl With a Heart of Gold Who Will Cut You if You Cross Her in one billion movies - but she did it so well that it was worth seeing her do the same thing one billion times.  It's such a pleasure to see her in a non-1930's potboiler with a complicated character and to watch her soar.  Given that I remembered Sissy so well, I assumed that her story line was boosted for the movie.  That's not the case, it was just that her story line had the least cuts to it.

Johnny - I'm on board with the acting, and so was everyone else because the actor who plays Johnny walked away with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.  But I have two beefs.  Beef #1, the movie shies away from the alcoholism, so Johnny spends 99% of his screen time being Dad of The Year.  The movie gives us "sick" instead of "drunk" early on, but over the course of the movie Johnny only goes on one bender so it doesn't seem like he's really that into the booze.  Beef #2 is that the book never stops telling us how young Johnny was, but the actor who played him was 45.  45 is a fine age, but it's not the new 30.

McShane - eh he's fine.  Exactly like the book.

Francie - when I said that I didn't remember her, I did her a huge disservice.  The actor who plays Francie is pitch perfect.  The look on her face when she gets pinched by the scrapman is priceless, and her grief at Johnny's death had my eyes misting up.  When I said that I didn't really remember Francie, it's because her story arc is cut short by the movie.  The movie only gives us one year in a kid's life, it doesn't take her from child to young adult like the book does.

Neeley - he's fine, my only quibble is that he looks very well fed.  Actually I could say the same about Johnny, so it seems that the Nolan women starve while the Nolan guys live high on the hog.

McGarity (not shown in the trailer) - I wasn't picturing James Gleason when I read the book, but I really like him in the movie.

So Get to the Point - Yay or Nay to the Movie?

Yay!  I am happy to tell you that I was incorrect that this is a forgettable movie.  It's excellent.  When I saw that it was over two hours, my first reaction was "jeez...gonna be a long one" but the story moves.

Shoutouts: the way the Nolan family is portrayed.  There's a very touching scene where Johnny comes home from a gig with lobster and caviar and the entire family has a midnight feast.  Johnny and Katie tell the kids about their early married life when they were caretakers for a school and there's a look in their eyes that lets you know that a baby will be getting conceived as soon as the kids go to bed.  All of the scenes with Francie and Johnny.  Francie's grief after Johnny dies, culminating at her graduation when Sissy gives her the flowers from Johnny.

Disses: overall the movie does a better job than most at handling the things in the book that couldn't be brought into the movie due to censorship, but the story stumbles in places (Sissy's bigamy, Johnny's alcoholism).  The poverty is downplayed - we're told money is tight but no one misses a meal at any point in the movie.  Some of the key moments of the book are shown but glossed by because there is no time to talk about them.  We see the tin can savings bank, but we're never told the history or significance.  The soundtrack is dreadful.

I call BS: according to IMDB, the condom scene was filmed but cut from the movie due to censorship.  Don't get me wrong, I desperately wish for this to be true, but I just don't believe it.  First of all, all movie scripts had to be approved by censors before filming, and there's just no way that Trojans got past the censors.  Also, I've seen a bajillion old movies and a bajillion old movie sex scenes - yes just because you can't show something doesn't mean that you can't work it into your movie if you're clever.  The only method of contraception that existed in old movies was separate beds.

But is the movie so excellent that it's even better than the book?  OF COURSE NOT!!!!!!!  The book is the clear winner over the movie.

But...if you've just read the book, I think you'll enjoy the movie.

Great, Where Can I See It?

Get out your library card!  Or if you have cable, keep an eye on TCM's schedule.  Sadly it looks like this is the movie that the internet forget.

Has anyone seen ATGIB movie?  What did you think?