Wednesday, July 01, 2020

To Each His Own (Mitchell Leisen, 1946)

Happy 104th birthday to Olivia de Havilland who won her first Best Actress Oscar for To Each His Own. This was Mitchell Leisen's entry in the maternal melodrama genre in which women mother from afar. Here, de Havilland becomes a cold cream mogul and gets her child back four years after losing him in an adoption scheme that backfires. But she realizes that she cannot make up for all that crucial lost time simply by reclaiming her legitimate motherhood. So she gives up her son again and requests "fourteen hours work a day" as a fire warden in WWII London to occupy herself in his absence. It's a request many women would make (or at least fantasize about making) after the war which helped make To Each His Own a top 25 grosser in Hollywood's biggest year.

Side note: The film's theme song was no such thing. It wasn't included in the film as it charted three months after the film's release.
Grade: B+

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