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 Kings Row is the name of a small town and this movie tells the story of people
struggling "toward adulthood in the face of unspeakable cruelty and madness."
Ronald Reagan plays Drake, who is described as "happy-go-lucky" and they note
that Reagan used a line from this movie, "where's the rest of me," for the
title of his autobiography years later . They say that Ann Sheridan, Robert
Cummings, and Charles Coburn and others "are equally brilliant in
this fine film." They also claim that the movie was "a bold film that laid
bare small-town hypocrisy." They finish by saying that Kings Row is "a nice
town to see...but pray you never live there." 1942, 126 minutes, VHS
The best part of life in a small town is the absence of anything to do with
your free time. There's no orchestra, no zoo, no sports teams, no adult
bookstores or anything like that to unwind with at the end of a long day at the
factory. That means that people in these small towns have to look inward for
something to get satisfaction from. Usually that takes the form of cheap brew
and watching the Home Shopping Network to see how many pairs of 4XL tiger print
stretch pants can be sold in 90 seconds (I think the record is 466). In the
movies though, the people that populate these small towns are always a lot
better looking and whole lot more deranged. All sorts of bad stuff goes on in
these little hamlets where life seems so placid and easygoing to the outsider,
but actually is usually closer to one of those plays that Euripides or
Aeschylus wrote when they weren't inventing democracy or something. Every
single person in town has a dark secret that is usually able to be dramatized
rather well because it involves them screaming at others, threatening them,
passing dark glances among other loonies, and of course killing! Kings Row is
basically one of those old movies where this little town has a bunch of people
going through their crazy, mixed-up lives and how they try and cope with all
the pain that living in such a burg brings to them. The movie also hints
pretty hard at the fact that small towns devour those who are dumb enough to
stay behind and I suppose that it's because places like that are so familiar
and insular that when you don't leave, you are marked by the rest - your past
transgressions (real or imagined) are forever remembered and people have
nothing to do with themselves but to wait and settle up with you. This is one
of the themes that runs through this movie - the only way anyone ever finds any
kind of peace is if they leave Kings Row somehow. Some characters are able to
leave physically, while others know their only way out is in a pine box. Until
the last 20 seconds of the movie when the lame and unconvincing happy ending
rears its ugly head, this movie ensnares its characters in a continuous pattern
of anguish and pure cruelty that is at once numbing and fascinating. Every so
often these people are allowed to hope and smile, but that of course only
portends somebody getting their legs amputated by a crazy doctor with a grudge.
Hope he didn't have too high a co-payment on that little operation!  The town of Kings Row is supposedly based on novelist Henry Ballamann's
hometown of Fulton in the great state of Missouri. Back then, Kings Row was
known as the home for such tormented souls as actors Robert Cummings and Ronald
Reagan. These days Fulton is mainly known as the town where everyone who is
going to the Department of Corrections stops at first so that can be assigned
the proper prison for their stay. This place is called the Fulton Regional
Diagnostic Center. It sounds a bit like a health clinic where they try and
figure out why people do crazy stuff like collect the entire EuroShock line of
DVDs, as opposed to which big house you'll be doing your five to fifteen in. I
actually had the opportunity to go down to Fulton on a secret mission the other
week, but declined and instead stayed home and watched Mars Needs Women . Had I known that I would have been traveling to the real-life Kings Row, I
would have reconsidered since the Fulton Chamber of Commerce has a suit that
Ronald Reagan wore in the movie on display. It still wouldn't have been a slam
dunk that I would have made the hours long trip. After all, it isn't like they
have Claude Rains' hairpiece on display (how many Oscars did that thing win
anyway?). Claude Raines? In addition to Robert Cummings and Ronnie, this
movie also features Claude Rains as a doctor who works in the emerging field of
psychiatry. He is the doctor that takes Cummings' character Parris Mitchell
under his wing and teaches him all about headshrinking. Guess what doctor has
a sex-ay daughter in addition to a hairpiece (giving a fairly restrained
performance in this picture)? Claude's Dr. Tower of course, silly! Her name
is Cassie
and she's this chick that Parris used to hang out with when he was a kid. The
movie begins with a nice sequence that manages to evoke the carefree days of
youth along with the heartbreak that usually accompanies such carefree times in
small towns (like no one showing up for your birthday party because your mom is
such a freak that your dad has to keep her locked up in the attic). Cassie and
Parris walk home from school
together, they go swimming in the old swimming hole and he even goes to her
crappy birthday party (Shoot, can you imagine how much cake and ice cream you
could get at a party for an unpopular kid?). Parris also hangs out with rich
playboy Drake McHugh. They end up playing with a girl named Randy from the
wrong side of the tracks (She literally lives on the other side of railroad
tracks!). I think I speak for most of us rich playboys when I say that low
class girls named Randy are a perk of our profession. The childhood sequence
ends with Cassie tearfully telling Parris that her daddy is taking her out of
school and teaching her at home and that she can't hang out with him anymore.
Thus begins the anti-homeschooling plotline.  The movie skips ahead to after high school and we find that Parris has finally
come back to Kings Row! I don't remember where he had been or why, but he's
back home and living with his old gypsy aunt (Maria Ouspenskaya). Parris'
parents must have croaked sometime because this aunt is all the family he has
(and judging by the way he carries her around in his bedroom, it's the only
family he needs!). Parris hooks up with his old pal Drake (now played by
Ronnie) and Drake has turned into quite a fine young man whose only goal in
life is to take girls "buggy riding" as he puts it. Of course he can only get
the plump Ross sisters to go, because no decent girl would be caught buggy
riding with a spoiled rich kid who is just marking time until he can get his
hands on his trust fund. Parris is going to be a doctor and he's come back and
is going to study under Dr. Tower. No one has seen little Cassie Tower since
he started homeschooling her when she just about to hit puberty (Oo-la-la!).
Parris gets to see her briefly when he goes over to Tower's house, but the
doctor makes it clear that he doesn't want Parris to use the front door anymore
since Cassie hangs around it like a dog needing to be let out to take a dump or
something. Periodically, he gets glimpses of her and eventually during a
storm, he and her embrace and make out as the lights blink and the thunder
crashes outside. Later that night, Cassie comes over to see Parris at Drake's
house and she's all hyper and wants to run away with him and he babbles on
about how he'll settle down with her once he finishes medical school in a
billion years and she tears off into the night back home. The next morning,
Drake brings Parris some coffee in bed and tells him to drink it up before he
drops some bad mojo on him. Drake has been checking the internet news sites
and the breaking news out of Kings Row is that some doctor named Tower
had poisoned his daughter to death and then shot himself.
Parris is a bit distraught by this, but seems to get it over it pretty quickly
(so much so that I thought he did it!) and only seems to remember the tragedy
at certain
dramatic parts in the rest of the film. It turns out that Dr. Tower really
liked Parris and left him all his property and journals. This is good, because
the doctor apparently kept one of those Doogie Howser-style journals where he
wrote about all the stuff that happened to him and what he learned from
his experiences. Junior high girls also do this, but that's called a
diary and is
just for silly girls! This is a journal and contains stuff like: "Today I
poisoned my daughter. Her mother was schizo and I was afraid that Cassie was
turning out like that so I used my knowledge of psychiatry to help her. By
killing her. Now that she's all better I am going to shoot myself. Adios. Dr.
Tower. P.S. Give all my crap to Parris." 
Well, I won't lie to you. That development was a bit of kick in the head.
Call me a sentimental old biddie, but I was rooting for Parris to overcome his
obviously homosexual tendencies and make an honest and sane woman of Cassie. I
guess you have to expect that sort of result though from a family that
homeschools their kid. Drake has his own affairs of the heart to deal with
though. It involves a gal by the name of Louise Gordon. Louise is an
uppercrust girl whose daddy is Dr. Gordon. Back when they were kids, Parris
and Drake could hear the screams of a man that Gordon was operating on since the
good doc wasn't using chlorophyll. We later find out that that guy doesn't
make it through the operation. Well, Drake wants Louise to run off and marry
him and tells this to Dr. Gordon. He objects and forbids Louise from having
anything to do with him again. Drake goes off in a huff and hooks up with
Randy from the wrong side of the tracks. She's grown into one of those good
looking Irish redheads that are always smarting off to their man. Did I
mention that Parris' aunt bought the farm? Where are my manners? The old
gypsy aunt caught a dose of cancer and croaked which devastated Parris for
about a half hour before he went off to Vienna to study this new-fangled
psychiatry stuff. With Parris in Vienna, the movie takes an interesting shift
in focus and we get to see Randy and Drake falling in love and having a gay old
time (it was 1900 after all). Everything is swell until Drake finds out that
the bank president has ripped off his trust fund and gone off down to Mexico.
Can't these guys ever catch a break? Drake is broke and has to sell his
beloved buggy (goodbye Ross sisters!) and also has to sell his house. Soon
Drake is a bum and we know this because like in all old movies where good
looking guys turn into bums, they grow this three-o'clock shadow, turn their
jacket collar up and shuffle along with that tramp gait they all seem to
instinctively know. He even gets drunk at the saloon and gets tossed into the
drunk tank! Eventually he gets a job on the railroad and Randy still likes him
even though her lottery ticket just got voided. There's an accident in the
rail yard one day and the next thing you know, Drake is eligible for the
Paralympics. When he wakes up and finds his legs missing, Ronnie gets off the
classic "where's the rest of me" line that turned out to be the highlight of
his career (except for maybe that time he joked about outlawing the USSR and
that bombing would begin in five minutes - now that was hilarious). Parris comes back to Kings Row to help out Drake, since he's pretty bummed out
that he don't have any legs anymore. This is where some dark secrets regarding
the Jordon family surface and it is very effective and chilling how these
things play out. The movie ends on a shockingly upbeat note that only the
naivest viewer would find believable, but at two-plus hours, the movie had to
end sometime and happy endings were practically required by the Hays Office in
those days. Nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture (it
lost out to the cry baby Mrs. Miniver), Kings Row retains much of its dramatic power, though so many terrible things happen to
so many people, it sometimes veers dangerously close to overkill. The best
thing about this movie is Ronald Reagan's performance. For those of us that
know him from his doddering old age, trying to lead this country or that he was
in a couple of movies with a chimp, seeing him in action with A-level material
is a revelation. He had a definite screen presence (more so than star Robert
Cummings who looked and acted like smug simp) that engages us as soon as he
first
popped up on the screen. His scenes with Ann Sheridan (Randy) are particularly
strong whether they are exchanging playful banter, bitter truths, or just
trying to get by. Parris is supposed to be the main character, but he has this
annoying habit of maintaining this cool scientific detachment through most of
the 85 tragedies that befall everyone in this town. His best scene where he
avoids this is when he sees a woman in white at the old swimming hole and calls
out Cassie's name. In spite of his travels around the world and all the stuff
he learned about the swill that swirls in most our heads, he still is moved by
the memory of the girl he loved and that specific place that was their
touchstone. Memories are powerful and are the one thing that can probably move
even the most repressed among us (that and some of my world famous Four-Cheese
Nachos made with Wow Chips!). The movie takes place at the turn of the century
and makes a case that our world was at a turning point back then, modern
problems cropping up, but still being dealt with by age-old methods that never
worked. The problem of the mentally ill at a time when little was known about
the subject combined with the natural backwardness of a small town to form this
crucible of secrets and death and torture. The movie can be accused of being
overwrought and a tad shrill in places (the dialogue between Parris and Cassie
is fairly egregious at times), but the performances of Reagan, Southern and the
supporting cast overcome that for the most part and when you find out the truth
about Drake's injury, the utter waste of human potential is palpable. The
dreams of everyone in the movie were ruined by staying in Kings Row. Only
Parris, who left, was able to achieve his. Anyone who's ever lived in a small
town can tell you (if they're being honest) that those places have no pity on
those that are different and that you grow up hoping you live long enough
spiritually, to escape. Kings Row successfully navigates around the edges of the
movie-style soap opera to bring us a memorable look at how that most hallowed
slice of Americana, the clean, pretty, small town, was just as susceptible to
madness, corruption and pointless violence as any big city. Should it have
beaten Mrs. Miniver for Best Picture? Doesn't matter, because The Magnificent Ambersons should have beaten them both.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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