With permission from the editors of the sister website José Sanmartín Esplugues[1], in which I usually reflect the results of research on philosophy and cinema—more specifically on film personalism—I want to share here with the readers of the Bioethics Observatory a small discovery. The latest contributions presented in this section of bioethics and cinema have found their common thread in the work of Mitchell Leisen (1898-1972), a director whom we have described as a personalist[2] for his ability to highlight the dignity of human people in their ways of presenting themselves on the screen. As if his films were invitations to persevere in the search for good in a subtle and understanding way, in which he is not scandalized by human weakness nor does he omit its possibilities for hope and improvement.
What can be proposed as a contribution that has not been thematized or argued until now is that in Leisen’s collaboration with the screenwriter Claude Bynion (1905-1978), and the actor Fred MacMurray (1908-1991), a triptych of films was developed between 1942 and 1947 that drew in an original and creative way this idea philosophically expressed later by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II: “man and woman deeply realize themselves by rediscovering themselves as people through the sincere gift of themselves.”[3] ] This is a statement that can and should be reflected upon, discussed argumentatively and justified, based on one’s own experience, but it also deserves to be exposed in all its beauty. Thus we see it intelligently proposed on the screen in these three films: Take a Letter, Darling (She and her Secretary, 1942), No Time for Love (No time for love, 1943) and Suddenley is Spring (Suddenly it is spring, 1947). Beauty corroborates the Good and the Truth.
The denunciation of the objectifying gaze on women
In this contribution we will focus on Take a Letter, Darling. From its first scene we are encouraged to reflect on the way men and women relate to each other. And it starts with the look. Leisen and Bynion show Tom Verney (Fred Mac Murray) attending a job interview at an advertising company. The office secretaries pay attention to him because of his physical attractiveness in an undisguised way. Only because of his manly presence do they predict that even if he were a fool he would get the job he aspires to, they whistle at him and use various innocent tricks to get a closer look at him. They treat him like an “object man.” Situations that women usually went through at that time – and this was shown in many films in an uncritically festive way – and that Leisen does not hesitate to denounce when putting a man in that same situation.
This is just the beginning. The job Tom Verney aspires for is presented as the “personal secretary” of an aggressive executive. A.M. MacGregor (Rosalind Russell). A task that she must carry out at night, accompanying her boss, and receiving a large weekly remuneration. When Verney tries to explain to a friend what his activity consists of, he asks him if he has not been hired as a “gigolo.” Once again, a topic frequently brought to the screen is being denounced: the secretary, who in reality is being subjected to forms of sexual self-exploitation that want to appear presentable. As Leisen brings back the ellipsis, now we see it on a man in all its rawness. Laura Mulvey[4], a feminist author, accused Hollywood cinema as a whole of promoting an objectifying view of women. But not all movies were like that. We see how Leisen and other directors that we describe as personalists did the opposite: denounced oppression and contempt for the dignity of women.
On the night of the first day of work. A.M. MacGregor goes to pick up Verney from his boarding house. He appears dressed in the tailcoat that she bought him as uniform clothing. The other guests promptly murmur. They pour disqualifying comments on him. The ones usually received by girls who go out with their bosses. Reckless judgments that attack the weakest part, motivated by arguments typical of envy. Soon the viewer can realize the injustice of gossip. MacGregor wants his secretary as a kind of bodyguard. At these business dinners, the men she deals with tend to make advances, as if the beautiful executive’s favors were part of the provision of services. The presence of the secretary as if he were her fiancé acted as a barrier. The main condition that this employee had to meet was not to fall in love with his boss.
The correct relationship between men and women
Up to this point, it would seem that Leisen and Bynion are constructing a story in defense of a feminism of equality, role reversal, and women’s empowerment. But it actually goes further. Look for the correct relationship between men and women. Something that Stanley Cavell has been able to read as his own feminism, which developed between the 1930s and 1940s, and of which the Hollywood comedies of remarriage (marital renewal or refoundation) are the best exponent[5]. Take a Letter, Darling has common points with this genre of comedies. They respond to a search for values by women, which will not remain only in public discourse, but will reach their personal and daily lives, and mainly their relationship with men. Expressions of life that could not remain in conflict and opposition, but rather proposed the beauty and intelligence of reunion as people through the sincere gift of the woman towards the man and of the man towards the woman.
Cavell explains that in these comedies what women are looking for is to choose the man they want to educate them. José Sanmartín preferred to simplify this turn of Cavell’s and speak of a search for mutual education in dedication and gift. In Take a Letter, Darling, this becomes palpable. Despite strict orders prohibiting falling in love, MacGregor herself feels that call in the person of Verney. She recognizes that they both have in common knowing how to humiliate themselves to get money. She with her million-dollar business, he accepting a salary. But in this “humiliation” she points out that there is something about her that is being instrumentalized and that rebels against those situations. Verney discovers her secret. He is a painter who seeks resources to continue dedicating himself to freely developing his vocation. Something that touches the interior of the executive, who recognizes that he also writes poetry.
That point of mutual attraction is not enough. She guards, above all, her independence. She will have to go through a whole process of knowing herself better and educating herself. The occasion will come when she asks her secretary to accompany him to a dinner with some billionaires from the tobacco business, whose extensive publicity she wants to manage. Jonathan Caldwell (Macdonald Carey) is an eccentric and bitter young man having already been divorced four times. His sister Ethel (Constance Moore) is a crazy young woman who becomes infatuated with Verney, whom this time MacGregor has introduced as a very influential company executive. The board becomes jealous, and when she eventually believes that Verney has become engaged to Ethel Caldwell, she accepts her offer to be Jontahan’s fifth wife out of spite.
What A.M. What MacGregor doesn’t know is that Verney has no such commitment, and that Tom Verney has played to make him feel jealous so that he decides to abandon his desire for independence. Only the final intervention of A.M.’s partner MacGregor, a man who knows her well and who tells Verney that she is not going to be happy in that marriage, makes the painter devise a plan to get her back. Nothing less than the executive’s face on a semi-nude woman that she had in her studio, and sending it to her as a wedding gift. When they open it at the Caldwell mansion, the most intransigent part of the family screams. Jonathan, on the other hand, is unbearably condescending, forgiving MacGregor for a mistake he never made, and even relieving that she is a light woman, since he recognizes himself as such.
Tom knew MacGregor well enough to know that she would not accept these gestures of superiority or false understanding, and that he would definitely break off her wedding engagement. The executive could take risks in business, but not with her most intimate world. She agreed to marry Caldwell believing that he would respect her. When this is not the case, she stands up without any consideration. The last scene of the film shows her leaving the mansion and walking along the road and Tom coming with his car and his caravan to invite her to live another type of marriage, in which they could share the simplicity of traveling through Mexico to contemplate nature and painting landscapes. The reunion is not harmonious. Without words, we see how he invites her to get into the car and that she resists her and throws stones at him. Only when she observes that the car is stopped at a level crossing and runs the imminent risk of being hit by a train, does she agree to get into the vehicle and have it drive off. A quite explicit metaphor for the overwhelming force that unites them and that they have learned to manage from mutual respect. We do not see the couple’s reconciliation, but rather THE END that is seen on the other side of the wheels of the train.
Conclusion: the mutual education of men and women as the cradle of life
Stanley Cavell explains very well why in some lines written to comment on His Gril Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940), an illustrious precedent for Take a Letter, Darling, because they share the prominence of Rosalind Russell and her educational processes in their relationship. with the man.
We actually don’t know if the couple leaves together without being married; Probably, when we see them march, they don’t know it either. Speculation is pertinent. A premise of the farce is that marriage kills romance. One of the projects of the marriage comedy genre is to refuse to draw conclusions from this premise and, rather, to turn the farce on its head, to turn the marriage itself into a love story, an adventure…[6]
Mutual education in marriage also has a purpose that goes further. Build the cradle of life. Growing mutually in the gift is what allows us to welcome children equally as a gift, respecting their unique, unrepeatable dignity, free from manipulation, even before their appearance in the mother’s womb. The happy ending, the personal comedies, is not a still photo, it is an adventure of freedom that the spouses will continue to renew in the face of any challenge and difficulty, delving deeper into what makes them people.
José-Alfredo Peris-Cancio – Professor and researcher in Philosophy and Cinema – Catholic University of Valencia San Vicente Mártir
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[1] https://proyectoscio.ucv.es/filosofia-y-cine/personalismo/
[2] We have studied his films until 1939—that is, until before Remember the Night, the oldest of those we have analyzed in this section of Bioethics and Cinema—in Sanmartín Esplugues, J., & Peris-Cancio, J.-A. (2019c). Philosophy and Cinema Notebooks 05. Personalist and community elements in Mitchell Leisen’s filmography from its beginnings to “Midnight” (1939). Valencia: Catholic University of Valencia San Vicente Mártir.
[3] An idea expressed by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II in various passages of his Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, and collected by number 111 of the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2005). Compendium of social doctrine of the Church. Madrid: BAC – Planeta, p. 57).
[4] Mulvey, L. (1999). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In L. Braudy, & M. Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism (pp. 833-44). New York: Oxford University P.
[5] Cavell, S. (1981). Pursuits of Happiness. The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, p. 17.
[6] Cavell, S. (1981). Pursuits of Happiness. The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, p. 186.
