The Shopworn Angel

Plot synopsis:
After the United States enters World War I in 1917, the limousine carrying Daisy Heath (Margaret Sullavan), a sophisticated Broadway musical theatre star, knocks down Bill Pettigrew (James Stewart), a naive young soldier from Texas. A policeman orders the chauffeur to take Bill back to camp. During the ride, he becomes slightly acquainted with the cynical, but not cold-hearted Daisy.
Upon their arrive at the army camp, Bill lets his buddies assume that Daisy is the date he had lied about. In fact, he has no one. When they find out the truth, they decide to get even. On their next leave, they take Bill to Daisy's show, so he can introduce them. However, Daisy pretends that she is Bill's girl. As they spend more time together, she begins to warm to him, much to the increasing jealousy of her wealthy real boyfriend, Sam Bailey (Walter Pidgeon), who is financing Daisy's show.
When Sam takes Daisy out for an afternoon at his Connecticut estate for the first time, she tells him that Bill has shown her what true love looks like and made her realize she actually does love Sam. She also believes that the rivalry has also given new depth to Sam's love for her.
That same day, Bill learns that his unit is finally going to ship out for the fighting in Europe. When he cannot get a leave, he goes AWOL so he can propose marriage. Daisy opts to accept so that he can sail for France with something to look forward to. Sam objects to the odd arrangement privately to Daisy, but kindly refrains from telling Bill the truth. The two marry; then Bill has to leave immediately.
He sends her cheerful letters every day. Then, a letter comes from the War Department. As Daisy is in the middle of a performance, her maid Martha takes it to Sam, sitting in the audience. When Sam opens the letter, Bill's ID tag falls out. Daisy sees it, tears fill her eyes as she realizes that Bill has been killed, but she bravely finishes singing "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile".

Tags: romantic

Review:
What others might say is a lack of chemistry between Stewart and Sullavan in this charming picture, is what I call "acting".People from widely different social circles react to situations differently.
The examination of things that sometimes happen during a war between unlikely pairings.Without trying to reveal any of the story, I will say that one never felt as if Sullavan portrayed the complexity of her character without conviction, in fact, she did it admirably.
This movie is no exception and I took that perspective into account as I watched the story unfold.I would recommend this movie to any fan of James Stewart or Margaret Sullavan.
There's no doubt that THE SHOPWORN ANGEL uses a plot that has been used countless times in movies and books over the years.
It's the story of a selfish actress (MARGARET SULLAVAN) suddenly succumbing to the country boy charm of a soldier (JAMES STEWART) who is about to be sent overseas in WWII.
Meanwhile, she has her agent WALTER PIDGEON, whom she depends upon for emotional support and love.
Surely, there is nothing new about the bare outline of the plot.But what works in the story's favor is the simplicity and charm of the three leads.
Despite this flaw in the characterization, it's a very winning performance that she gives.Likewise, JAMES STEWART does wonders with a thinly devised role of the country bumpkin who falls impetuously in love with an actress, even to the point of asking her to marry him before he goes overseas.
At this point, the plot's outcome becomes telegraphed because we know this is a Margaret Sullavan film and tearful romantic dramas have been her specialty.
He's also got an abundant sense of humor that the story needs.It's a trifle of a film, but beautifully acted and given a lift by the winsome performances of its three leads, moving at a brisk pace to the Hollywood ending.
I thought it was a good example of Jimmy Stewart's work in earlier films before he became a big star.But as much as I enjoy and admire Jimmy Stewart, I thought Margaret Sullavan took acting honors in this one.
I also thought the chemistry between the two was a plus.Stories like this one have been done many times in the past - country bumpkin meets jaded big-city veteran - but this picture had a unique charm about it that makes movie-going so enjoyable and rewarding.
I find it particularly interesting to compare this with the other bookend to Salt's screenwriting career, Coming Home, also a character-driven story that revolves around the complex, three-way relationship between a woman and the two men who love her in a time of war..
I know I am going to sound really picky here, but the hairstyles and clothes are 1938--not WWI like the movie is supposed to be (other than uniforms).
Well, considering that it's got Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, what do you think?!
However, over time, this jaded lady comes to life when she's with Stewart and eventually they fall in love for real.
Some may hate the surprise but I appreciated how the writer avoided the clichéd or simple ending.Well worth seeing despite some poor attention to details.
James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan made four films together, the most she had with any leading man.
In fact Stewart's career was given a considerable boost when Sullavan requested him in the lead of their first film, Next Time We Love.
Sullavan had been married to Henry Fonda, Stewart fellow Princeton alumnus from the Triangle Club and Fonda and Stewart were a pair of starving New York actors back in the day.The film is a sweet romantic story about a young soldier who quite accidentally comes between a Broadway actress and her playboy boyfriend.
The story had been previously filmed at Paramount earlier during the last dying days of the silent screen with Gary Cooper, Nancy Carroll, and Paul Lukas in the roles that Stewart, Sullavan, and Walter Pidgeon play here.
Stewart is just perfect as the earnest young private from Texas who Sullavan while using Pidgeon's car as transportation, knocks down in a New York City street.
One thing leads to another and Sullavan finds she's got two men on her hands.
Jaded showgirl Margaret Sullavan agrees to help him out by pretending to be his girlfriend.
He quickly falls in love with her for real but things are complicated by his having to ship out for the war and her already having a boyfriend (Walter Pidgeon).The second of four movies pairing Stewart and Sullavan.
Margaret Sullavan was truly one of the most effective actresses of the golden age, able to wring the most genuine emotions out of any situation.
The story is just a boy meets girl tale with a few twists but because of the stars as well as Walter Pidgeon, complicating matters but also being wise and warm, and the always amazing Hattie McDaniel, being her usual flip self it remains involving throughout.
I LOVE Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart.
I give this a 10 because I love both of these actors, but I hate the story.
Why would anyone put Stewart through all of this when Sullavan loves Pidgeon?
I recently began looking for Margaret's films and since I love both of these actors, this was the next choice.
Why would anyone write a story where Jimmy Stewart is taken advantage of?
I know he loved Sullavan in real life, so I can see that coming through.
When the United States enters World War I, patriotic Texan Jimmy Stewart (as William "Bill" Pettigrew) is among those to sign up for service.
In New York for basic training, Mr. Stewart is bowled over by showgirl Margaret Sullavan (as Daisy Heath), but she is promised to distinguished Walter Pidgeon (as Sam Bailey).
With Mr. Pidgeon's okay, Ms. Sullavan shows young Stewart around the city, including the roller-coaster at Coney Island.
They're supposed to be "just friends" but Stewart is falling in love This was a direct re-make of the 1928 silent/sound success starring Nancy Carroll and Gary Cooper, and there were dozens of films with this romantic wartime love triangle.
The Stewart/Sullavan chemistry is easy to appreciate.
A new Broadway musical sensation known as Mary Martin provides Sullavan with a beautiful singing voice.****** The Shopworn Angel (7/15/38) H.C. Potter ~ Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon, Hattie McDaniel.
James Stewart is an appealing bumpkin whose homespun attitudes appeal to jaded Margaret Sullavan in "The Shopworn Angel," which also stars Walter Pidgeon and Hattie McDaniel.Sullavan is a successful performer who is forced to give Stewart a ride when a policeman catches him trying to cross the street.
It's not the best example of the work of Stewart, Sullavan (alone and together), or Mankiewicz but worth seeing as it's one of Stewart's early leads..
Even the great Margaret Sullavan can't make sense out of a character who starts out as a bossy, obnoxious, self-centered Broadway star, is humanized by hayseed soldier James Stewart by about the third reel, suddenly becomes a Nobly Suffering Heroine, still leads steady beau (and keeper) Walter Pidgeon on, and tries in every way to have her cake and eat it too.
It's a Borzage-like romance without the Borzage touch, and with cliches that must have been cliches even by 1938--the chorines trilling "Pack Up Your Troubles" as the World War 1 soldiers depart for France (and Sullavan's incongruous dubbing is unintentionally hilarious), the lovestruck private dreaming of his ladylove while peeling potatoes, the bombs-bursting-in-air war montages with ominous music.
After seeing Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart hit it off so well in The Shop Around The Corner (A film that is the ultimate in charm), I looked forward to seeing their early film together, The Shopworn Angel.
This film was sort of a disappointment for me, even with James Stewart in it (One of my all-time favorite actors).James Stewart plays a WWI soldier who is sent to New York for basic training.
After being nearly run over by well-known actress Daisy Heath (Margaret Sullivan), he asks Daisy to pretend to be his girl just to impress his friends at the camp, but then a real romance forms.I have one question for this film and that is, what romance?
I didn't know what to expect when I started this one but I'm sure glad I gave it a chance.Walter Pigeon, Jimmy Stewart or Margaret Sullavan could not have done a better job with these roles.
Mostly you see just 2 headliners in a cast and the rest are supporting but there are 3 great roles in this and they all lead to a great little film.If your in the mood to feel good and have a good cry, you can't go wrong with this one.
The way people reacted to war in the time of WWI is so much different from the way things are today.
This movie is worth seeing if only to serve as a documentary of how times change.
The plot is definitely far-fetched by today's standards.The love story here is more about the love of country instead of love between people.
This thought provoking film is expertly carried by James Stewart and Walter Pidgeon.
Margaret Sullavan's performance is less impressive because her character is not as believable to me..
This is the kind of modest, sweet and emotionally true - and superbly written, acted and directed - movie that is the glory of the Golden Age.I cannot add to the perfect reviews above (especially the first few) except to reiterate their points about the emotional maturity and complexity of the picture.
We feel the raw, physical nature of the relationship between Daisy and Sam - amazingly, with no nudity or the crudeness of films today.
While the Stewart-Sullivan pairing doesn't quite live up to the chemistry they have in The Shop Around the Corner, this earlier film shows they had it even then.
Walter Pidgeon is also good in his role, for what it is.
The two leads have SO much chemistry that it makes Sullavan's character Daisy Heath's relationship with Pidgeon's Sam Bailey not so realistic.
She was supposed to have realized she was still more in love with Sam than ever but it just doesn't quite come across.
What does leap off the screen is the chemistry between Bill Pettigrew (played by Stewart) and Daisy Heath..so yes, it's a letdown that Heath is not supposed to be in love with Bill when the plot builds up to it..
This is a great Classic film with great actors like James Stewart,(Pvt. William Pettigrew),"The F.B.I. Story",'59,who was very young in this picture and played a love sick soldier going to fight in WW1.
Pvt. Pettigrew met Margaret Sullivan,(Daisy Heath),"The Mortal Storm",'40, a show gal who had a kind heart and some what fell in love with him even though she liked Walter Pidgeon(Sam Bailey),"The Bad & the Beautiful",'52, Sam stood by and watched the young couple go dating and enjoying themselves in Luna Park, Coney Island, N.Y. Amusement Park.
Hattie McDaniel (Martha, Daisy's Maid),"Gone With the Wind",'39, who had a brief supporting role, gave a great performance and a few laughs.
There was a musical scene during the film where Margaret Sullivan sings and dances to an audience of soldiers and sang,"Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag & Smile Smile Smile",which was an old time song sung during WWI.
If you like an old Classic Film from 1938, and loved James Stewart when he was very young, this is the film for you!.
This film let's you use your imagination James Stewart made this film even though he has not got a very big part remember in the film he is a long way from home no friends and off to war and the twist in the film make it clear and the way the song pack up your troubles was put across if this film was made today that song would have the number one slot for sure.
This is a cute romantic gem where a young Texan Private soldier (James Stewart) is receiving his final training prior to shipping to WW1-torn Europe when he is almost run over by a wealthy New York socialite Daisy Heath (Margaret Sullavan).
After kind of "playing either hard to get or annoyed", she realizes that he is going to war and probably won't come back.
Daisy (who is very well educated in real life  Harvard) initially doing a kind act of the heart is slowly seduced by the simplicity and genuineness of this young cowboy's heart.This story touched me deeply and I identified strongly to it.
Margaret Sullavan is very articulate and so kind that she accepts to marry this young recruit because to him "she is a dream come true that may keep him alive during the years of hell that he will endure" Years, Americans were very patriotic and draft/conscription was a fact of life for most young males.
we still need the love, the hope, the dream (so nicely expressed by "Daisy" in "The Shopworn Angel") that someone special does care back home.May God Bless America and brings justice to the evils that are eroding our country.
In 1917, following America's entry into World War I, a young soldier named Bill Pettigrew meets Daisy Heath, a famous Broadway actress.
To their discomfiture, however, Daisy decides to go along with Bill's story and pretends to be his girl.
Bill and Daisy begin to spend more time together, and he falls deeply in love with her.
There is, however, a complication in that Daisy already has a boyfriend, Sam, who becomes increasingly jealous of her friendship with Bill.For most of its length, "The Shopworn Angel" resembles a romantic comedy, the sort with a storyline about two very different men in love with the same girl.
I suspect that a few years later, following America's entry into World War II, it would have been made as such with Bill, the simple but patriotic young farm boy, returning from the war a hero to claim Daisy's hand ahead of the wealthy, cynical Sam.
In 1938, however, most Americans were keen to avoid involvement in the looming European conflict, and a film which took an overtly patriotic approach to war might not have done well at the box-office.The mood of the film therefore changes abruptly at the end from one of romantic comedy to one of tear-jerking melodrama.
Although Daisy is in love with Sam, she marries Bill immediately before his departure for France, in the belief that this will give him a brief period of happiness.
Daisy and Sam never seem to have considered what might have happened if Bill had returned from the war alive.
"Broadway Star Greets Returning Hero with Divorce Papers" is not the sort of headline that would have done much for Daisy's career.The fact that Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart made four films together in as many years suggests that someone obviously thought them a good screen couple.
They were to be good in "The Shop Around the Corner" (I have never seen their other two films, "Next Time We Love" and "The Mortal Storm"), but here there is no chemistry between them at all.
Sullavan's Daisy comes across as patently insincere, and Bill as a complete booby for believing that she could possibly be in love with him.
(Bill, incidentally, is supposed to be from Texas, something stressed several times in the dialogue, but Stewart, a native of Pennsylvania, makes no attempt at a Texan accent, sounding exactly the same as he does in all his other films).
Stewart was actually a year older than Sullavan, and it might have been better had a younger actor been cast as Bill to emphasise the contrast between the naive young soldier and the more mature, worldly-wise actress.Like another reviewer, I was struck by the lack of effort to give the film a period feel; the clothes and hairstyles are much more those of the 1930s than of the 1910s.
These things changed more quickly in the early twentieth century that they do today; there would have been a much greater difference between the fashions of 1917 and 1938 than between those of 1991 and 2012.I must admit that this film was largely a disappointment to me.
James Stewart made some of his best films in the late thirties and early forties ("Mr Smith Goes to Washington", "Destry Rides Again", "The Philadelphia Story"), but "The Shopworn Angel" is not in the same class.
Indeed, with its corny, sentimental story, its sub-standard acting and its abrupt change of mood near the end it must rate as the weakest of his films which I have seen.
James Stewart plays a naive hick soldier who falls for Margaret Sullavan and wants to marry her before going off to war.
She is a selfish actress who undergoes a remarkable character transformation in his presence and, in a ridiculous plot turn, agrees to marry him, even though she is in love with Walter Pigeon (who's the best part of this movie) the whole time.
Stupid plot aside, the unsettling part of this is Stewart, who yet again plays a character so selfish and obsessive that he comes across as creepy and unappealing, despite (or perhaps because of)the outward singular innocence he's supposed to represent.
But in this movie and other early films like "Of Human Hearts" and "Come Live With Me" (the way he flips out in childish rage at Hedy Lamarr near the film's end, for example)I find him completely off-putting and have to remember his later films in order to remind myself that, yes, I actually do like him..
James Stewart came off as so naive and really creepy.
She should have told him right at the top that she was in love with Walter Pidgeon But, no, she didn't " realize" that Stewart was in love with her.
The ending was real bad--so convenient for Stewart to die in battle.