IT HAPPENED TOMORROW: Blu-ray (Arnold Pressburger/United Artists, 1944) Cohen Media Group

The transcendental nature of time itself is at the crux of director, René Clair’s It Happened Tomorrow (1944) a blissful and vivacious comedy of errors costarring Dick Powell and Linda Darnell. The rights to produce it had originally been snatched up by indie director, Frank Capra – then, just coming off his highly successful spate of comedies over at Columbia Studios. A creative rift between Capra and studio chieftain, Harry Cohn ought to have paved the way for one of Capra’s most delicious and sparkling rom/coms in years. Instead, Capra’s conscription into WWII delayed these plans – Capra, selling off the Hugh Wedlock/Howard Snyder tale (along with Lord Dunsany’s similarly-themed 20-year-old one act play he had also purchased) to producer, Arnold Pressburger, whose career dated all the way back to the early silent era. Pressburger, in turn, wasted no time hiring Clair to direct, based on a screenplay authored by the director’s best friend, Dudley Nichols. It should have all worked as planned. And, in point of fact, most of the movie is a sparkling gemstone – a real jewel in Clair’s crown, despite the director’s dissatisfaction with the final results. The picture was a sensation, however, and for good reason. Clair’s picture-making prowess is on full tap here. He gets the most from the screenplay as well as his stars if, in Dick Powell’s case, taken as second best.

Born René-Lucien Chomette, in 1898, Clair’s reputation as an established French filmmaker/writer and leading member of the Parisian avant-garde in the 1920’s was a curious fit for the American assembly line manufacturing of dreams. Yet, Clair somehow made it work. It Happened Tomorrow falls right in the middle of Clair’s most prolific period in Hollywood with two of his most popular American-made confections: 1942’s lithe, if strangely out of sorts, I Married a Witch (on which TV producer, Sol Saks would later base the perennially popular series, Bewitched 1964-72), and, Clair’s brilliant adaptation of Agatha Christie’s darkly purposed murder/melodrama, And Then There Were None (1945). For the role of newspaper hound, Lawrence Stevens, Clair had initial sought Cary Grant. Grant, however, took no interest in the project. So, instead, Clair was granted amiable leading man, Dick Powell, then on the cusp of making his career change from the light and frothy male ingenue, exploited thoroughly in a string of highly successful Busby Berkeley musicals over at Warner Bros., and, his total reinvention of that screen persona as hard-bitten realist, Philip Marlowe, relocated to RKO for Murder, My Sweet (made and released the same year).

In retrospectively reviewing It Happened Tomorrow we are immediately reminded of two things: first, Powell’s planned departure from playing these happy-go-lucky gents without cents was perfectly timed (he was, after all, at age 40, well past his prime to convey those innocent and blithe comedy roles) and second, the total underestimation then, of 21-year-old co-star, Linda Darnell’s extraordinarily fine and unique qualities. For here was an actress who could run the gamut of emotions, convincingly to play a thoroughly jaded shrew (Hangover Square, 1945), lusty saloon hostess, (My Darling Clementine, 1946), hard around the edges’ gal/pal (A Letter to Three Wives, 1949), or, as in It Happened Tomorrow, the crisply executed, though romantically naïve love interest, Sylvia Smith – half of a mentalist con to costar her uncle, Oscar (the magnificent ham, Jack Oakie). In Linda Darnell we have one of Hollywood’s great ironies – a girl momentarily granted every opportunity to succeed, but then, helplessly made to observe as all of her hard work suddenly evaporated into thin air.

The product of an unhappy home, Darnell was an aspiring if underaged starlet when she caught the eye of 2oth Century-Fox’s mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck. And while Zanuck’s studio protection, and connections to the FBI, helped thwart a planned extortion, also to divert suspicions away from the actress who had received threatening blackmail letters, Darnell’s gratitude and Zanuck’s tolerance for his fledgling discovery were irrevocably severed when Darnell, then age 19, eloped with 42-yr.-old cameraman, Perverell Marley. Due, in part, to Marley’s heavy drinking, the marriage was rocky from the outset, and Darnell, after taking her lumps, marked the cliché of leaping from the frying pan into the fire with an ill-timed affair involving the highly eccentric womanizer/millionaire, Howard Hughes. Marley and Darnell would reconcile. But by now, Darnell, in poor health, thanks to her alcohol addiction and fluctuating weight – was becoming her own worst enemy. Another affair, this time with her ‘Letter to Three Wives’ director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, resulted in some hostile emotions, depression and a botched suicide attempt. Darnell also became embroiled in a lawsuit, charging ex-business manager, Cy Tanner with embezzling $7,250 from her accounts.  At 32, and nearly penniless, Linda Darnell began anew, without the auspices of a Zanuck in her corner and, for the most part, making pictures abroad for producers who neither recognized her exemplary aptitude nor were willing to appropriately compensate her for what it was worth. Darnell died in a house fire in 1965. Yet, even in death, she was to be denied her final request to have her ashes scattered over a ranch in New Mexico. Instead, her remains are interred at Union Hill Cemetery in Pennsylvania, in the family plot of her son-in-law.

It Happened Tomorrow never strains Darnell’s capabilities as an actress. But it does provide her with the opportunity to play a wholesome and good-natured screwball heroine with gusto – a variation, perhaps, on an idea more familiar with the likes of a Jean Arthur or Irene Dunne. And, anchored to its vintage trappings for a turn-of-the-century diverting milieu, on which a good many American-made movies from the 1940’s, yearning for that seeming lost, yet not-so-distant and simpler time uncomplicated, as yet, by the industrial revolution and two world wars, fell back on to alleviate the collective cultural strain of WWII, Darnell emerges to typify that sprig of winsome and hopeful promise for that ‘then’ perceived ‘sunnier tomorrows, alas, never to come. It Happened Tomorrow opens with a planned celebration of Larry and Sylvia Stevens’ golden wedding anniversary. Regrettably, as the couple’s extended family assemble to mark the celebration, Larry and Sylvia begin to quarrel about an undisclosed revelation regarding their family fortunes. Larry wants to spill the beans. Sylvia insists he remain silent. We regress fifty years, to the year 1890, re-introduced to soon-to-be ex-obit’ writer, Lawrence Stevens, newly promoted to reporter for The Evening Star by his editor, Mr. Gordon (George Cleveland). At Larry’s farewell party he is offered a curious gift by aged city desk pensioner, Pop Benson (72-yr.-old John Philliber in his movie debut!). The gift, tomorrow’s newspaper today. Just think what it would mean to the career of a fledgling reporter…knowing the news in advance of it actually happening.  At first, Larry doesn’t believe a word of it. In fact, he quietly tucks the paper away in his coat pocket, forgetting about it as he and his pals go on a pub crawl to end at a music hall showcasing the mentalist act of the great Cigolini (a.k.a Oscar Smith) and his clairvoyant assistant, Sylvia (actually, his niece). The two are successful at performing their con on the audience and Larry, already inebriated, takes the opportunity to goad Sylvia into accepting his invitation to lunch the next afternoon.

However, the next day Larry has yet to examine the paper Pop gave him until a friend, looking for work, accidentally borrows it to apply for a job at a restaurant, yet to be posted. The paper also describes an impromptu snow shower in May that, as Larry is reading the headline, actually begins to fall. It also headlines a daring robbery perpetuated by armed bandits at the opera house later in the afternoon. Determined to test his theory – that the paper is somehow a product from the future – Larry drags Sylvia on their ‘first date’ to the opera house. Clearly smitten, Larry and Sylvia witness the robbery. Larry calls in his story to Gordon without actually telling him about its origins. Alas, in this, he runs afoul of Police Inspector Mulrooney (Edgar Kennedy), who suspects Larry is somehow complicit in the crime. Nobody buys Larry’s confession – that he actually saw today’s headlines before they actually happened. After considerable police interrogation, Larry pleads with Pop, who has the uncanny knack of showing up whenever Larry needs him, to reveal news of the, as yet at large, bandits. Pop again supplies Larry with tomorrow’s paper today: the top story, the apprehension of the thieves during another staged robbery. Larry shares this info with Mulrooney, and Sylvia, at great peril to her own reputation, gives Larry an iron-clad alibi at the time of the robbery. So, Mulrooney has no choice but to let him go. A grateful Larry offers to take Pop home. But the mysterious codger merely suggests they must go their separate ways before disappearing into the night alone.

Now, Larry returns to the theater, only to discover Sylvia has already departed it, after making a rather cryptic prediction to the audience, under duress and observation by Mulrooney, about a woman leaping from a nearby bridge to her death.  Larry examines the newspaper Pop gave him and does indeed discover a suicide between its pages in precisely the manner Sylvia described. Arriving at the bridge too late, Larry finds a crowd of onlookers ruminating about a woman who just leapt from its side, presumably to her death. Diving in after her, Larry finds Sylvia clinging to a nearby boat. As the paper suggest ‘no body’ was retrieved, Larry already knows Sylvia will not be discovered. So, he takes her back to his apartment to dry her clothes, dressing her in his new suit, shirt, tie and shoes before sending her home. Alas, nosy neighbors, witnessing Sylvia sneaking back into the rented room she shares with Oscar via an open window, suspect her to be a man she is otherwise secretly smuggling into her bedroom to circumvent the house rules. Disbelieving the neighbors, upon his return home Oscar discovers Larry’s discarded clothes under his niece’s bed. Her attempts to explain the situation fall on deaf ears. So, Oscar orders Larry, at gun point to wed Sylvia, a decision with which he is only too happy to oblige. Only now, determined he should have something more to offer his beloved, Larry gets Pop to grant him one more newspaper in advance. His plan: to bet his entire life’s savings on the horses with results already confirmed.

Pop gives Larry the newspaper, then disappears. Alas, Larry finds more than he bargained for when the paper’s latest headline heralds his own murder inside the posh St. George Hotel. Depressed, but determined to somehow circumvent the inevitable, Larry takes Sylvia and Oscar to the races and, against Oscar’s sweaty-palmed objections, bets everything he has on the four meets of the day – winning every last one, much to the chagrin of bookie, Jake Shomberg (Edward Bromphy). Shomberg’s accomplice, Shep (Paul Guilfoyle) attempts to rig the final race to steal back Larry’s winnings. But Shep’s deceptive victory is overturned by the judges. Determined Larry should not make off with his cold hard cash, Shep intercepts the buggy carrying Larry, Sylvia and Oscar, stealing Larry’s wallet and making for the St. George Hotel. Disturbed, but determined not to get himself killed, Larry nevertheless makes chase after Shep inside the cavernous hotel lobby. Shep pulls a gun and fires blinding into the crowd. Now, police intrude. In the hailstorm of bullets that follow, Shep is mortally wounded. However, when police examine his pockets and find Larry’s wallet on his person, they naturally assume Shep is Larry Stevens. Hence, the headline to have appeared in The Evening Star was false. Realizing this mistake, Larry’s good friend and fellow reporter, Bob (George Chandler) tries to halt the presses but to no avail. Now, Larry is informed by Bob that Pop died three nights ago. Hence, it appears Larry has been consorting with a playful ghost all this time. In the present, Larry concurs with Sylvia. No one would believe him if he tried to explain any of this now. And what purpose could it possibly serve to tell their family the truth? Instead, the couple present themselves as originally planned, serenaded by loved ones to mark the occasion of their 50^th wedding anniversary.

Owing to decades of neglect and lack of redistribution, It Happened Tomorrow has been out of the public spotlight for far too long and remains all but forgotten by film fans. For although the picture was made by Rene Clair under duress, even he was quick to admit its last 20-minutes were likely “the best thing I ever did in Hollywood.”  And, retrospectively, one can definitely mark Clair as the intermediary of a sort of clear-eyed and spooky projection into the future, situated between the prophetic turn-of-the-century works of H.G. Wells, to predate his eminence, and those later delineated by the great Rod Serling in his masterpiece anthology series, The Twilight Zone (1959-64). Clair’s initial interest in this project had greatly soured after he was unable to get Cary Grant for the lead. Still, Dudley Nichols’ story held a special connection for Clair who, like Larry Stevens, had been fired from his job as a reporter, only Clair, for having concocted a narrative counter to the truth of an actual event he was supposed to chronicle for his paper. Clair, something of an authoritarian on the set, on this outing welcomed the improvisations of Jack Oakie, who frequently conveyed the generalities of the dialogue he had been given, while never entirely adhering to the words as actually written in the screenplay.  

It Happened Tomorrow is a comically sublime and thoroughly appetizing fantasy. John Phillber’s haunting, yet quaint turn as the ghostly sage who, upon point of his own death, decides to teach a relatively ‘young’ whippersnapper the pitfalls of being able to see beyond the tip of his own nose, creates an eloquent, yet modestly unsettling framework onto which Clair and Nichols hang several charmingly obtuse, screwball comedy vignettes, the best being Larry’s penultimate pursuit of Shep.  Clair’s sophisticated pretense is a hoot, if a trifle heavy in spots. As a confection of 40’s fluff, It Happened Tomorrow is greatly enhanced by an exile’s outlook on his newly adopted homeland, infusing the picture with lithe and lovely uber-European wit and sophistication. While one may argue that the flashback framing device used to launch this tale is completely unnecessary, the reason for it here – far from the rudimentary uses typically ascribed it – suggests how the aspirations of man, marked and marred in all his worldly folly, and set against the ambitions of his youth, may continue to linger and taunt him with nagging questions in his emeritus years, if, indeed, to have provided the catalyst for his longevity and success. And the premise, at least, endures, more than serviceable as resuscitated for TV’s Early Edition (1996-2000).

It Happened Tomorrow arrives on Blu-ray via the Cohen Media Group in a distribution deal with Kino Lorber. Decades earlier, original film elements were preserved by UCLA’s Film and Television Archive. And this new-to-Blu is described as being sourced from a brand new 4K scan ought to have been a real lily. The results, alas, while intermittently impressive, are not altogether satisfying. Contrast is often anemic. Not boosted, just sincerely faded, losing the upper register in Archie Stout’s creamy B&W cinematography.  Also, the first reels here suffer from some finite edge enhancement and a residual thickness. Perhaps, no original elements have survived in the interim, especially for the scenes depicting Larry’s drunken pub crawl and ‘cute meet’ with Sylvia in the back of his carriage. Here, the image is murky at best, with amplified grain - both thick and chalky. Not good. Things steadily improve thereafter. But the image never attains that level of razor-sharp refinement for which a 4K scan ought to have corrected virtually all the aforementioned anomalies. The LPCM 2.0 mono is problematic in the original Westrex soundtrack is plagued by perceptible crackle and distortion, strident dialogue and the occasional pop. Disheartening too, Cohen has afforded Clair’s classic no love by way of any extra content, save a badly worn theatrical trailer. Not even an audio commentary or chapter stops. For shame! Bottom line: It Happened Tomorrow is a bouncy supernatural comedy of errors. It will warm the heart, even if it occasionally confounds the senses. While the movie is highly recommended, this transfer is just a shade above so-so. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

0