Homecoming (1948)

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Starring: Clarke Gable, Lana Turner

Clarke Gable and Lana Turner find themselves in the romantic drama picture disguised as a war drama in Homecoming. In the style of The Best Year’s of Our Lives, Homecoming attempts to share the story of a soldier’s emotional changes through the experience of war. However, in reality the picture is a story of love and loss during an extended war time separation from his wife. What was a rather well received box office draw for 1948 would become a film that doe not play very well with more contemporary audiences where women are not simply companions to serve husbands.

Homecoming is a war period romantic drama of a married man who has a love affair while serving in the Army that causes him issue when he returns home. Ulysses Johnson (Clark Gable) is a successful surgeon, hard working, with a loving, supportive wife, Penny (Anne Baxter). However, he is seen as having a general lack of emotional connection with patients and a absence of empathy for others, traits he is called out for by a friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Sunday (John Hodiak). With the outbreak of World War II Ulysses enlists as an Army surgeon where finds himself within an unsuspected affair with his nurse Lt. Jane “Snapshot” McCall (Lana Turner). Through correspondence with her husband, Penny deduces Ulysses’ underlying feelings for Snapshot, becoming increasingly jealous of their affair. At war’s end Penny welcomes her seemingly war weary husband home, who eventually shares the feeling he once had for his nurse who recently died from a battle wound, as well as how the war opened his eyes to a new found need for sympathy towards others. An overwhelmed Penny closes with compassion for her husband to support him with love as he transitions back into the world after his effects from his service time.

The film has the right mix of a leading man from the pre-WWII days with a leading lady that had become one of the highest box office attractions of the day under the direction of one of the greatest filmmakers of the period. However the story drags on and the lesson of the plot leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Gable plays refreshingly different from the suave men of his earlier work while Lana Turner portrays a much more down to earth character than the sultry characters of her past. Anne Baxter is featured as a supporting player cast as the troubled wife in a role that seems below her dramatic range. With all this star power it is easy to see the picture was a sizable hit at the box office in 1948, but in hindsight the film has its troubles in story, making it a success that is easily forgettable.

Gable, formerly the biggest leading man in the industry and decorated war veteran, and Turner, one of the leading female box office draws of the time, both play against their known types in the picture. To see Clark Gable is such a troubled, reflective character is actually quiet nice. It manifests that his acting range goes beyond the Rhet Butler types most remember him for. Lana Turner since her work in The Postman Always Rings Twice was transitioning from merely a blonde sex symbol into one of the better serious actresses in the business, as well as one of the busiest. Together the two share a fresh chemistry as they play character types they are not known for, even delivering moments of humor in the rise of their budding attraction fro each other. Their character portrayals do feel a genuine as they share a relationship on screen that would attract many romantic film fans.

Anne Baxter carries a very trying role as Penny, the neglected wife of Ulysses. Coming off of an Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actress for 1946’s The Razor’s Edge, Baxter has less to work with in this portrayal of a loving wife deducing a love affair from her husband’s letters home. The film’s mass appeal revolves around the affair between Ulysses and Snapshot, concluding in Snapshot’s dramatic death and its effect of the surgeon. The lonely Penny find’s her only sympathetic companion with an ear to listen and shoulder to cry on in the form of Dr. Sunday, a friend of her and her husband that called him out on his lack of sympathy. It happens that Sunday is played by John Hodiak, Baxter’s real life husband at the time. To reintroduce Penny back into the relationship with Ulysses is difficult for the film, and in unbelievable terms she welcomes him in with open arms as a dutiful wife. This gesture is meant to be a signal of unconditional love, but may leave the audience feeling their relationship is unresolved.

One cannot blame director Mervyn LeRoy for the lacking nature of the picture. His direction makes the film appear more like a 1940’s tent-pole feature with its star names and at times vast production quality. The battle sequences, although brief, are wonderful with a vast setting and hundreds of extras, but it all plays background to the relationship of doctor to nurse. LeRoy, Gable, and Turner are all great in this picture, it just ends up that the story can be seen as a flop.

For MGM the movie was a great success, taking in millions in profits with much thanks to the names of Gable and Turner. Despite the direction of LeRoy and the power behind the picture it is clear that the film in an underlying nature was not that great, thus its lack of award nominations or critical praise since 1948. Homecoming initially portrays itself in a manner of a story about post traumatic war difficulties, but falls into romantic melodrama set to the background of the war. In the end it just becomes a bit of a mess with an ending that feels unfulfilling and degrading to women who are to simply care for men, because they could not understand the emotional trauma that they had gone through away from their wives.

I cannot say I would recommend this film from a story point of view at all. Visually, though, the picture is very well done, going along with the acting of Gable and Turner that provides greater depth to their performances. Perhaps a removal of the Anne Baxter character would have changed how I viewed the storyline, but in contemplation this idea would just make the movie simply a sappy love story set to WWII. What may be wanted is retribution for the character of Penny, leaving us with a more broken, sad ending that would at least feel honest, but that was just not how Hollywood films were constructed during that period. It would take several years and more European influence to bring about such pictures.