To Each His Own

Plot synopsis:
In World War II London, fire wardens Josephine "Jody" Norris (Olivia de Havilland) and Lord Desham (Roland Culver) keep a lonely vigil. When Jody saves Desham's life, they become better acquainted. With a bit of coaxing, the ageing spinster tells the story of her life, leading to a flashback.
Jody is the belle of her small American hometown of Piersen Falls. Both Alex Piersen (Phillip Terry) and traveling salesman Mac Tilton (Bill Goodwin) propose to her. However, she turns them both down. A disappointed Alex marries Corinne (Mary Anderson). When handsome US Army Air Service fighter pilot Captain Bart Cosgrove (John Lund) flies in to promote a World War I bond drive, he and Jody quickly fall in love, though they have only one night together.
A pregnant Jody is advised (out of town) that her life is in danger and she needs an operation. She agrees, though she would lose her unborn child. However, when she learns that Bart has been killed in action, she changes her mind. She secretly gives birth to their son in 1919. She tries to arrange it so that she can "adopt" the boy without scandal by having him left on the doorstep of a family with too many children already, but the scheme backfires. Corinne loses her own newborn that same day, but is consoled by Jody's. Jody has to love her son, named Gregory or "Griggsy," from afar.
Jody's father dies, forcing her to sell the family drug store. When Jody asks to become Griggsy's nurse, Corinne turns her down; she has suspected all along that Jody is the boy's real mother. Knowing that her husband never loved her, Corinne is determined to keep the one person who does.
Jody moves to New York City to work for Mac. She discovers to her surprise that he is a bootlegger, using a cosmetics business as a front. The same day, the place is raided by the police, leaving Mac with nothing but the cosmetics equipment. Jody persuades him to make cold cream; with her drive and determination, she builds up a thriving business, and they become rich.
In 1924, she forces Corinne to give her Griggsy by threatening to block a desperately needed bank loan for Alex's failing business. After two months, however, the four-year-old (played by Billy Ward) is still so miserably homesick, Jody gives up and sends the boy back.
Heartbroken, Jody leaves the US to immerse herself in work, setting up and running the English branch of her Lady Vyvyan Cosmetics Company. During World War II, her son (also played by John Lund) becomes a pilot in the 8th Air Force. When he gets a leave in London, Jody meets his train and fusses over him. He only knows her as a family friend. Lord Desham, who is attracted to Jody, uses his influence to arrange for the young man to marry his WREN fiancée without the customary delay. After some broad hints from Desham, Lieutenant Pierson finally realizes why Jody has been so helpful and asks his mother (by that title) for a dance.

Tags: romantic

Review:
After winning her two-year court battle with Warner Bros., OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND became a free-lancer and got her big chance when Paramount offered her TO EACH HIS OWN, a script that had already been turned down by Ingrid Bergman and Ginger Rogers.
Everyone shines in this movie, from the leads (OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND and JOHN LUND) to the smallest bit players.De Havilland was perfect as Jody Norris, realistically portraying a young girl of seventeen and then various stages of maturity, ending as a brusque, middle-aged business woman in war-torn London of 1944.
Her range as an actress is fully demonstrated and she does a remarkable job of playing the heroine at various stages of development.John Lund is excellent too in a dual role (her lover and later her grown son), Bill Goodwin as a good-hearted pal, Philip Terry as another suitor who still loves her after marrying her friend (Mary Anderson).
This is a Romance 'par excellence' handled with maturity, insight, and simply told in flashbacks which take us back to earlier years, into the realities of life for a young woman who loses her true love during wartime (WW1) then finds herself unmarried and bringing a child into the world whom she must give up afterwards due to a twist in circumstances.
It's a truly wonderful role for Olivia de Havilland, as Jodie Norris, and I can't think of anyone else who could play it so convincingly.Roland Culver, in his supporting role as Lord Desham, provides a substantial backup for the elderly 'Jodie' who meets him rather abrasively during WW2 days but later relates to him the personal tragedy in her youth.
After having only seen Olivia de Havilland in 2 films (Gone With the Wind and In This Our Life) I could tell she was a very natural actress, gifted at convincing you she is who she plays onscreen.
I didn't know what to expect except I knew she won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance of Jody Norris in this wonderful film.
Olivia puts a lot of actresses to shame with her understated, technical and extremely moving portrayal of a small-town girl forced to give up the son she bore out-of-wedlock to the county's richest family.
Jody sells the family business once her father dies and goes to New York to roll in the high life and become a successful business woman.
A masterful performance by Olivia de Havilland and fine supporting performances, particularly by Mary Anderson as Jody's son's adopted mother and Robert Culver as Jody's friend Lord Deshem.
When the illegitimate son of that  romance finally meets his biological mother, Jody, with the help of her friend Lord Desham it is every adopted childs wish come true.
She meets up with dashing Roland Culver who's a titled earl doing the same work and her thoughts go back to her years as a kid during that first World War.A romance with a dashing flier played by John Lund and she's left pregnant and no chance of married when he's killed in action.
That called for Olivia to draw from the wellsprings of talent and ability that she knew she had and couldn't convince Jack Warner of the same.The film was aided at the box office by the popularity of the song To Each His Own. You will not hear a note of it in the film, but The Ink Spots and Tony Martin had best selling records that year, The Ink Spots version going to number one on that Hit Parade that Lucky Strike sponsored.
In fact I'm sure the popularity of the song and the film aided each other.To Each His Own also earned an Academy Award nomination for Charles Brackett for Best Original Story.You watch this film and you wonder just what Jack Warner must have been thinking when Olivia DeHavilland's name was announced on Oscar night..
To Each His Own covers more than twenty years in the life of Josephine "Jody" Norris (Olivia DeHavilland), a successful American-born businesswoman now working in London as an air raid warden.
Jody thinks back to an earlier time in her life when she had fallen in love with a handsome WWI fighter pilot named Bart Cosgrove (John Lund, in his motion picture debut).
At times, it was ALMOST too melodramatic and weepy, but the writers deftly skirted the edges and this resulted in a wonderful and engaging film that only the hardest-hearted people would avoid.The story itself was pretty racy for 1946, as the main theme involved an illegitimate child borne by DeHavilland.
I caught this one on a late-night TV broadcast some years ago and was immediately hooked by Olivia's beautiful performance (plus being a sucker for tear-jerking stories with a flashback structure, I'm embarrassed to admit.)  With Paramount's finest artisans and technicians in all departments to enhance her return to the screen, Olivia's Oscar was well-earned, indeed.Other IMDb comments on this title are "on the money" (except for the one nay-sayer...Can't please everyone!) but no one mentioned John Lund's (as Gregory, Josephine Norris' long-lost son, rediscovered during his wartime London leave) constantly having to exclaim "Holy Canarsie!" before nearly every line of his dialog.
It was a very tender story of the enduring and endearing love a mother had for her child.It brought to mind the contrast of today's societal views of unwed mothers(as it were).The story made me even more grateful to have 3 wonderful sons.I would love watch this movie with my mom and my five sister,on the day before mothers' day.
In an astonishing display of virtuosity, she plays the character over the course of 20 years, being utterly convincing both as a sweet young thing with an innocent smile and a hard-bitten middle-aged business woman whose lips are hardened into a permanent grimace of determined refusal to feel anything.
Another sterling performance in this film was by the wonderful Roland Culver, one of Britain's best-loved character actors.
As an unreserved fan of Olivia de Havilland I have to say that this was not her best film despite the fact that she acted her role brilliantly and won an Academy Award for it.
To Each Her Own. A successful cosmetics tycoon (Olivia de Havilland) goes on a flashback of her life story as she mans her assigned post during a bombing raid in 1944 London.
This trip takes us to her youthful days as the beautiful daughter working in her father's pharmacy in small-town New York state where she's the prize for a couple of suitors, but falls for a barnstorming WWI pilot (John Lund) and ends up having a son out of wedlock.
This role won de Havilland the Oscar for best actress and it is a great part which shows a woman taking on her times and succeeding in doing so..
An unwed mother, forced to give up her child to avoid scandal, follows her son's life from afar even as she prospers in business.Sometimes Oscar-winning performances make you scratch your head, especially many years after the fact.
The big draw for me in watching "To Each His Own" is the fact that it brought Olivia de Havilland the first of her two career Oscars for Best Actress.
Not only that, but she beat one of my all-time favorite performances by an actress to do so, that of Celia Johnson's in "Brief Encounter." Well, much as I love de Havilland, I think the Academy got it wrong that year."To Each His Own" is pretty standard-issue women's picture stuff of the time, albeit it's pretty racy in its treatment of unwed pregnancy.
It's a decent movie but a rather forgettable one, and Olivia was better in all sorts of other things, mostly because she had much better characters to play.Charles Brackett, frequent collaborator of Billy Wilder, was Oscar nominated for writing the film's original story.Grade: B.
One of these, titled THE OLD MAID, became a play and then a 1939 film, starring Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins.THE OLD MAID introduced the Civil War to explain the demise of its leading lady's love and father of her illegitimate child, in this case a girl.
This is another of those recipients of a top Oscar (in its case, Olivia De Havilland's first for Best Actress) which have unaccountably fallen through the cracks over the years; in fact, the copy I watched left much to be desired, and this prestigious Paramount effort does not even seem to have been released as a MOD DVD-R!
This neglect may have something to do with the fact that, not only was the star's second win – for William Wyler's Henry James adaptation (of "Washington Square") THE HEIRESS (1949) – a more substantial (or, if you like, contested) achievement but, that same year (1946), De Havilland would appear as twins in Robert Siodmak's classic noir THE DARK MIRROR, which the late eminent British film critic Leslie Halliwell eventually chose for the actress' rosette in his "Filmgoers' Companion"!
Anyway, the plot (co-scripted by producer Charles Brackett – who received the film's other Oscar nod for Best Original Story) is not exactly compelling and fairly preposterous at times: De Havilland meets, is seduced and impregnated by dashing flier John Lund (in his debut and, curiously enough, amounting to a dual role) in one night; then, so as not to create a scandal in her small town, she tries to pass her offspring off as a foundlingwhich is subsequently 'claimed' by a couple – the man involved having only married after the heroine rebuffed him – whose own baby has just died and left the mother grief-stricken!
However, De Havilland keeps a close watch on her son by seeking to assist her former flame's wife; when the family's fortunes flounder but herself comes into big money – by taking over the cosmetics company set up by yet another bootlegging ex-beau(!) – she offers to bail them out as long as the child is returned to her.
Years later, they are momentarily reunited in London (where he, whom Lund again incarnates, is about to be married) but a British lord – played by Roland Culver and who, like De Havilland, has known disillusion and loneliness – determines that the truth finally comes out...The handsomely mounted film is well served by the accustomed studio efficiency; De Havilland, only 30 when this was made, is most convincing as a woman who has sacrificed her youth and personal happiness for the sake of her (ungrateful) flesh and blood – in this respect, it does feel somewhat old-fashioned, considering that it offers nothing new from the standard "Madame X" formula.
Olivia De Havilland's first Oscar came for "To Each His Own."After a one night stand with a pilot, De Havilland, a small town girl with intelligence and moral fortitude, finds herself in trouble.Giving the child up is the most heart rendering thing imaginable to view.Years later as the world enters World War 11, in a chance meeting, De Havilland meets the child, now a grown man and in the army as well.Through the years, when they did meet, he could never imagine why she would cling to him.With his wedding approaching, De Havilland attends it in London, where she now resides.
But when given a sensible property like EASY LIVING or HOLD BACK THE DAWN he turned in one really good result of a film.In 1941 Leisin had directed Olivia De Haviland in HOLD BACK THE DAWN, a film about European immigrants in a Mexican/American border town like Tijuana, who were hoping to figure out how to finally achieve permission to come into the U.S. and become citizens.
Her performance was well done, and she got nominated for the Best Actress Oscar of that year.
Her intention is to come by with her father, find the family can't afford to have another baby to feed, and offer to adopt the baby so they can avoid a scandal and keep the child.Unfortunately the best laid schemes fall apart - De Haviland's rival, a wealthy snob (Mary Anderson) had married one of De Haviland's boyfriends (Philip Terry) but had lost their child.
Leisin's direction gave her every opportunity, and he brought out the best in the supporting cast - and the over-the-years review of events like the rise of women in business, prohibition, the Depression, and the Wars helped the film too.
De Haviland got nominated for an Oscar for best actress for TO EACH HIS OWN in 1946 - and this time she won.
First the structure:first a prologue ,then flashbacks and an epilogue ,which while going back to the present,connects all the links of the chain in an awesome way.It's not unlike Leisen's previous (and remarkable too) 'Hold back the dawn" : Lord Desham plays the same part as the director in the 1941 movie ;Although Jody does not tell her secret to him ,it's finally him who makes her dream come true."To each his own" possesses everything that makes a melodrama great: a "tearjerker" (not meant pejoratively) subject: the well known story of the unwed mother who's forced to leave her child to another family ,it recalls "the old maid" ,another classic where Bette Davis had a fate similar to her good friend Olivia de Havilland's; and ,another permanent feature of the genre,the heroine who has lost love (or who thinks that she 's through with it )and who begins a formidable business woman career (there are plenty of examples:Stahl's "Only yesterday" and "imitation of life" ,Sirk's "Written on the wind" );and a grandiose finale with a last line (I think it is our dance ,mother) to rival the best of the last lines.To write that De Havilland deserved her AA is to state the obvious.She actually plays three parts ,with the same talent.Like her peer Davis in "the old maid" ,she was not afraid of making herself look older or uglier .(see also "the heiress" "hold back the dawn" "snake pit" )..
Believing she wasn't getting kind of roles she wanted at Warner Brothers, Olivia de Havilland sued the studio to get out of her contract and for several years didn't appear in films.
Olivia finally won her suit, and this film, "To Each His Own" was her first for Paramount Pictures; and it is a gem of movie.
Olivia plays Jody Norris, and she performs the role from a young naive woman to a somewhat hardened middle-aged one.
The film is told in flashbacks; we first see an older Jody living in London during World War II.
Jody had a son some 20 years earlier out of wedlock by a young pilot who is later killed.
Because it was scandalous to be an unwed mother at the time, she concocts a scheme to have her baby raised by a wealthy couple (Mary Anderson and Philip Terry) in town.
The ending is slightly predictable, but what saves this film from becoming overly sentimental and sappy (although it is a tear-jerker) is the fine performance of Olivia de Havilland.
There are some fine supporting performances of note, particularly Mary Anderson, playing Corrine, the neurotic woman who adopts her son.
John Lund plays a dual role, that of Jody's lover and later her grown son.
Roland Culver is good as Lord Desham, a new love interest for Jody.
Olivia de Havilland won the Oscar for best actress in 1947 for "To Each his Own" a tearjerker, made in 1946.
In "To each His own", Olivia is Jody Norris, a small town girl working in her fathers store.
"To Each His Own" tells one such story, and Paramount couldn't have found a better actress to play the lead than Olivia de Havilland.
Her Corinne Piersen might have gained her an Academy Award nomination in another year without so many great films and performances.
It was an excellent combination for this inspired film that gave its star Olivia De Havilland her well deserved recognition in a role she made her own.
In the end, she is rewarded when the son recognizes her love for him through the years.The well deserved award by Ms. De Havilland was a tribute to the way she created a character that was real as well as noble.
John Lund is seen briefly as the father and the son in the life of Jody Norris.
Olivia de Havilland won Best Actress in this Charles Brackett Oscar nominated story.
The film opens during World War II in London with forty-something American Jody Norris (Olivia de Havilland) encountering a British man while on blackout duty on New Year's Eve. They don't particularly like each other but she helps to save his life when he slips.
Upon learning that the train will be late, she sits to wait and reminisces:In 1918, Miss 'Jody' Norris lives in the small town of Piersen Falls, working in a drugstore for her pharmacist father.
Jody dismisses Mac's entreaties similarly.A World War I bond tour comes to Piersen Falls by way of a military air-show; Captain Bart Cosgrove (John Lund, in his film debut) plays a road weary pilot who's tired of all the small town stops and responsibilities.
"To Each His Own" is a 1946 film starring Olivia de Havilland, John Lund, Mary Anderson, and Roland Culver.
The story is told in flashback, with Jody Norris (de Havilland), now in London during World War II, remembering her past while waiting for a train.Jody is a young, pretty girl in World War I when Captain Bart Cosgrove, a pilot, flies into town for a bond rally.
What happens alters the course of Jody's life and the life of her child.A very sweet film with an absolutely brilliant performance by Olivia de Havilland, who ages from a young, vibrant woman to a hard, lonely workaholic.
Yes, her performance is excellent, but the film itself is only (only?) very good.The story begins in London in World War II London, where Olivia is a fire warden.
A young lady in an American small town, she awkwardly falls in love with a WWI pilot (John Lund) on a barnstorming trip selling war bonds.