Kings Row
Tags: romantic, murder, sadist, melodrama

Plot synopsis:
The film commences in 1890 in the small midwestern town of Kings Row, focusing on five children. They are 1) Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings), who lives with his grandmother; 2) Cassandra Tower (Betty Field), daughter of Dr. Alexander Tower (Claude Rains); 3) the wealthy and fun-loving orphan Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan); 4) Louise Gordon (Nancy Coleman), daughter of the sadistic town physician Dr. Henry Gordon (Charles Coburn), who has been known to perform operations without anesthetic; and 5) the tomboy Randy Monaghan (Ann Sheridan), whose father is a railroad worker.
Parris is attracted to Cassandra, whom the other children avoid because her family is "strange": her mother is confined to the house and never seen. Dr. Tower takes Cassie out of school; she is confined at home and Parris does not see her again until years later, when he begins his medical studies under Dr. Tower's tutelage.
Parris' best friend, Drake, intends to marry Louise despite the disapproval of her father. Louise, however, refuses to defy her parents and will not marry him. Parris and Cassie begin a secret romance, seeing each other at Drake's house. At about this time, Parris' grandmother becomes ill from terminal cancer and dies as he is about to go overseas to Vienna for medical school. Parris, who decides to study psychiatry, proposes marriage to Cassie. She initially resists, running away, but later comes begging him to take her with him to Vienna. She then runs away again, back home.
The next day, Parris learns that Dr. Tower has poisoned Cassie and shot himself, and has left his estate to him. He learns from Dr. Tower's notebook that he killed Cassie because he believed he saw early signs that she might go insane like her mother, and he wanted to prevent Parris from ruining his life by marrying her, just as Tower's life had been ruined by marrying Cassie's mother.
While Parris is in Vienna, Drake's trust fund is stolen by a dishonest bank official. Drake is forced to work locally for the railroad, and his legs are injured in a boxcar accident. Dr. Gordon amputates both of his legs. Drake, who had been courting Randy before the accident, marries her but is now embittered by the loss of his legs and refuses to leave his bed. Nonetheless they commence a business, begun with Parris' financial help, building houses for working families. When Parris suggests they move into one of the homes they've built, away from the railroad tracks and sounds of the trains that plague Drake, he becomes hysterical and makes Randy swear to never make him leave the room.
Parris returns from Vienna to Kings Row and decides to remain there, when he learns that Dr. Gordon has died, leaving the town with no doctor. Louise reveals that her father amputated Drake's legs unnecessarily, because he hated Drake and thought it was his duty to punish wickedness. Parris at first wishes to withhold the truth from Drake, fearing it will destroy his fragile recovery. He considers confining Louise to a mental institution, even though she is not insane, to prevent the truth from being revealed to Drake and other victims of her father. But instead, persuaded by his new friend Elise (Kaaren Verne) to treat Drake like any other patient rather than his best friend, he tells Drake what happened. Drake reacts with defiance and summons a renewed will to live instead of the deep clinical depression Parris had feared. Parris is now free to marry Elise, having helped his old friend return to a productive life.

Review: Betty Field did an outstanding job as the doomed Cassie.The film also deals with a sadistic surgeon played by Charles Coburn, in a terrific brief dramatic performance.
We see the class differences among Drake, Dr. Mitchell (Cummings) and in a terrific performance, Ann Sheridan as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks that shows her devotion to Drake when he has a series of unbelievable misfortunes befall him.Drake's line "Where's the rest of me," when he awakes to find that his legs have been amputated is unforgettable."Kings Row" was nominated for best picture in 1942.
I've only recently seen this film in its entirety (after decades of watching the clip of Ronnie Reagan's best scene in it) and am totally surprised by how fine this film really is; in fact, when it ended, I found myself wanting to burst into applause.
Radio, since radio drama was a major national venue then and all of these older players, in fact, most major stars, had starring roles in radio plays.This picture would have been shown in its first run in the chain of theaters owned by Warners, mostly large ones, and shown in a large house, holding an audience of a thousand people or more, with a very large screen yards wide and high and a sound system that was louder and definitely more "high fidelity" than any member of the audience had at home or had heard anywhere else.
Reagan is the real surprise here; totally unaffected, he acts effortlessly here on film, building a character, listening to the actors in the scene and reacting in the moment.
Add to it James Wong Howe's lustrous b&w photography like an old family photo polished everyday by the doting old maid, the assured editing that pieces together scenes straddling across time [Parris, the good little boy to Parris the good young man] & space [Americana to Vienna, like the new year msg in Parris' letter from Vienna dissolving into another msg scratched out on the snow in King's Row], Sam Wood's confident direction [he had done 'Our Town' too] & brilliant all round acting.
For those who made fun of President Reagan's movie career by always citing "Bedtime for Bonzo" and laughing may be surprised if they take the time to watch "Kings Row." Even "Bedtime for Bonzo" is not as bad as those who have never seen it think it is, because of the ridiculous title.
There's also Judith Anderson of "Rebecca" fame; Claude Rains who first made a name for himself in a part were he was invisible through most of the film; Charles Coburn, the grand old man of 40's cinema, playing against type in "Kings Row" as not such a grand old man; Maria Ouspenskaya in a non-horror role; and Betty Field shines as the tortured soul, Cassie.Sam Wood's magnificent direction plus the acting keep the story from slipping into soap opera melodrama.
Claude Rains, Harry Davenport, Ronald Reagan, and especially Ann Sheridan are outstanding in supporting roles.I am not an "old geezer", a phrase used by Ronald Reagan in describing Dr. Gordon, who appreciates films from the 30's and 40's; unless being 59 qualifies me as such.
Kings Row is perhaps the granddaddy of all small-town epics--a strong story line, an excellent cast and all of it punctuated by one of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's most melodious background scores.
Two outstanding leads are Ann Sheridan (never more heartbreakingly honest and moving as the girl from the wrong side of the tracks) and Ronald Reagan as the carefree man she loves and sticks by when fate deals him a hard blow.
But the rest of the large supporting cast are extremely effective--Nancy Coleman (on the brink of insanity after her doctor father's horrific act), Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn (as the sadistic doctor), Claude Rains and Betty Field.
Wonderful black and white photography by James Wong Howe, excellent script by Casey Robinson, meticulous production design by William Cameron Menzies and, of course, that pulsating Korngold score--all create one of the most powerful films of the '40s.
Sixty years later, "King's Row" as a film holds an important place in American history for more reasons than just a famous line barked by a future American president.The central character is Paris Mitchell (Robert Cummings), the epitome of goodness and virtue.
His wife (Judith Anderson) supports him, but daughter Louise (Nancy Coleman) is desperately in love with Drake, and would do anything to be with him, even defying her parents.A childhood chum, Randi Monahan (Ann Sheridan) is the spunky girl from the other side of the tracks who grows up to be a beautiful and kind woman.
None the less there is sufficient balance between the dreadful happenings and human goodness to turn the film into the popular success it undoubtedly was in the early '40s, the mutual love between the hero (Robert Cummings) and his grandmother, the devotion through times good and bad of Ann Sheridan to Ronald Reagan and the unassailable friendship between Cummings and Reagan.
In what other Hollywood film of that time would one character - Claude Rains as the good doctor - say to another - his pupil, "I seem to be in a vein of epigramatic sententiousness today"!
Besides providing Ronald Reagan with his career role and the title of his pre-presidential autobiography, Kings Row is a finely crafted piece of film making by director Sam Wood.
The film got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best black and white Cinematography for James Wong Howe.Incredibly though, the rich musical score that Erich Wolfgang Korngold did was overlooked by the Academy.
That's the thing you will take away from watching the film, even more so than Ronald Reagan's anguished cry of 'where's the rest of me'.The story takes place at the turn of the last century with an interlude of ten years from 1890 to 1900 where we see the leads as children first and then as adults.
Above him are Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings and it's really the Cummings character whom the film is centered around.King's Row is the town these folks inhabit, purportedly based on Fulton Missouri, the hometown of author Henry Bellamann.
If in fact the novel is based on Bellamann's experiences growing up, he must have had one Gothic childhood.Sam Wood assembled an incredible cast of supporting players, like Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn, Harry Davenport, Minor Watson, Nancy Coleman, and Kaaren Verne.
Coburn and Anderson are the parents of Coleman and they don't like the fact she's keeping company with Reagan who's playing the entire Kings Row field.
Kings Row begs comparison to Our Town which is partly set in the generation where the Cummings, Field, Reagan, and Sheridan characters all grow up.
There are good performances from Cummings as an earnest fellow who wants to become a doctor, Field as a mysterious young woman he loves, Rains as her domineering father, Reagan, in his finest role, as Cummings' best friend, and the radiant Sheridan as the former tomboy from the wrong side of the tracks who loves Reagan.
The second part of the film, which focuses on the other major love story, that of Parris' best friend Drake (Ronald Reagan) and Randy (Ann Sheridan), the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks, is more faithful to Bellamann's novel and altogether more satisfying.
Though Cummings, as Parris, is bland and overly-sincere, the movie contains what is considered to be Ronald Reagan's finest screen performance (not that the competition had been that keen) and Ann Sheridan is an immensely warm and lovely presence.
The film belongs, however, to it's amazing supporting cast, comprised of some of Hollywood's finest character players: Betty Field, touching as the frightened and disturbed Cassie; the wonderful Claude Rains, beautifully underplaying as Cassie's sad, troubled father; Maria Ouspenskaya, characteristically cast as Parris' wise and loving grandmother; and, in particular, Nancy Coleman as the hysterical Louise, the sexually repressed daughter of religious fanatics (Charles Coburn and Judith Anderson).
The actors I wanted the most of, Claude Rains and Charles Coburn, as two small-town nutjobs, are sadly given little screen time.Warner Bros.
The final image in that film is the two grown sisters playing the hand-clapping game they once played as children.Then there is the magnificent "Kings Row" which says that, yes, we can go home again, and that things that turned bad can be put right.
Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Claude Raines, and Reagen spin a charming piece of magical story telling."Since You Went Away", "The Human Comedy", and "The Bishop's Wife" kind of movie...
This movie is so catty-womanish, it's sickening.What a shame considering the talents of Ann Sheridan, Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings, Charles Coburn, Claude Rains and more.
The story takes place in a small town at the turn of the 20th century and centers on the relationship between two friends, Drake (Ronald Reagan) and Parris (Robert Cummings), and their lives and loves from early childhood to young adulthood.
Sam Wood directed this turn-of-the-century drama that stars Ronald Reagan as Drake McHugh, an amiable young man who plans on becoming a businessman as soon as he comes into his full inheritance; in the meantime, he is also a ladies man...Robert Cummings plays Parris Mitchell, who plans on becoming a doctor, though is in love with Cassandra Tower(played by Betty Field) who lives with her reclusive father(played by Claude Rains) whose fates will be tragic...
Fine acting and interesting plot in this memorable film, based on a successful novel.Features the famous "Where's The Rest Of Me!?" scene with Ronald Reagan, the future 40th U.S. President..
Reading this book awakened my desire to study Medicine, which I did after the War with help of GI Bill and money I saved during my 5 years in USN, spent mostly in combat in the Pacific.Ronald Reagan's casting I thought was good, but thought Robert Cumming's could have better done.
Maybe because I didn't like Peyton Place, which Kings Row has been compared to, contributes to my dislike of the movie.I adore Ronald Reagan and he was the one bright spot.
The breathless enthusiasm of Robert Cummings' Parris takes some getting used to, but it is Ronald Reagan as Drake who burns himself into the memory with his cry of "Where's the rest of me?" Ann Sheridan glows in her role as Randy, the girl from the other side of the tracks who has more class and substance than most from the snootier end of town.The supporting cast adds much to "Kings Row" especially Claude Raines and Betty Field as the troubled Dr. Tower and his daughter Cassandra.
I remember during Reagan's political career his detractors used to deride him as a "B-Grade Actor" with such classics as "Bed Time For Bonzo".King's Row is about 2 boyhood friends growing up in 1890 in a small town somewhere in America.
Without spoiling anything I'll just say there are enough subplots that, by themselves, would still make a great movie but together make it a great movie.Others have described this movie as being like a soap opera - I think it goes deeper that.The central characters are Drake (Reagan) and Perris (Cummings) - how time has changed them - molded them - and their other friends - with some of the town's long held secrets finally revealed..
Also the supporting cast is great with Ann Sheridan, Charles Coburn and Claude Rains in some notable roles.The movie doesn't really ever pick on true main character.
Certainly, I felt Ann Sheridan was a good choice, and it was perhaps her best acting in her career, but both Ronald Reagan and Robert Cummings were too lightweight for the imporant roles they had.
The supporting cast of Claude Rains, Charles Coburn, Judith Anderson and Nancy Coleman were very good, but Betty Fields' Cassie fell a little short.
The story is long as it traces the lives of two men (Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan) in the town of Kings Row from childhood through trials and tribulations as adults.
Two boyhood pals from the 1890s grow into young adults with tumultuous lives: Robert Cummings is the studious kid who moves away from small town America to study psychiatry in Vienna (!), while Ronald Reagan loses all his money in a bank swindle and has to find work on the opposite side of the tracks.
Stars along with Reagan are:Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Betty Field, Charles Coburn, Claude Rains and Ernest Cossart..
A "must-view" for my group of friends growing up in the 50's and 60's, mostly for Eric Korngold's incredible score (with the main theme including consecutive measures in 4/4 3/4 and 2/4 time) and to see the finest screen moments of Ronald Reagan and Bob Cummings.
All the King's Horses and All the King's Men. Robert Cummings (as Parris), from the small town of "Kings Row", grows up to be a doctor of psychiatry - which winds up helping childhood friends like Ronald Reagan (as Drake) and Ann Sheridan (as Randy)...The Good: Mr. Reagan and Ms. Sheridan are terrific.
******* Kings Row (2/2/42) Sam Wood ~ Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan.
With a rousing and melodious score, this is filmmaking and storytelling at its best with all the actors given time to shine in their own role in the little slice of life shown here in "King Row.".
"Kings Row" (1942) directed by Sam Wood with enormous sensibleness for children at the beginning of this romantic fiction movie, whose action narrated occurs between 1890 and the happy new Century as one character, performed by Ronald Reagan, writes on the snow before her beloved of the moment.
Excellent too is Claude Rains as Dr. Towers and Parris' mentor, Betty Field as his deranged daughter, Charles Coburn as the sadistic doctor, the great Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya as Parris' grandmother and her good friend Col. Skeffington played by the always likable Harry Davenport ("When she passes ...how much passes with her?....a whole way of life, a way of gentleness...
It provided Ronald Reagan with his finest performance (he even entitled a pre-Presidential autobiography "Where's the Rest of Me?", from his most famous line of dialog from the film), moved Ann Sheridan to the "A-List" of WB stars, and offered one of the most memorable musical themes in film history, by composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.The story of a group of children growing up in a small community prior to the turn of the century, and the adults they would become, screenwriter Casey Robinson infuses the youngsters' escapades with an innocence that makes their actions (performing acrobatics in their underwear in a freight car, a nude 'dip' in a local pond) seem sweet, not naughty.
The 'leader' of the children, Drake McHugh (Douglas Croft/Ronald Reagan) is a rich, likable rogue, popular with girls, but most devoted to his best friend, serious Parris Mitchell (Scotty Beckett/Robert Cummings), a gifted piano student living with his grandmother (the remarkable Maria Ouspenskaya), who dreams of someday becoming a doctor.
The girls in their lives are Randy Monaghan (Ann Todd/Ann Sheridan), a good-hearted girl from the 'wrong side of the tracks'; Louise Gordon (Joan Duvalle/Nancy Coleman), boy-crazy, and the most popular girl in town; and mysterious Cassandra 'Cassie' Tower (Mary Thomas/Betty Field), who Parris secretly adores, the daughter of the reclusive Dr. Tower (Claude Rains).
Upon his shoulders would lie everyone's redemption and recovery.Despite an overly earnest performance by Cummings (with some of the most flowery dialog ever recorded on film), KINGS ROW works, thanks to the wonderful performances of Reagan and Sheridan.
You actually believe that she might be a very young Ann Sheridan.Reagan, Cummings, Sheridan, and Claude Rains are all excellent.
Soon, the story jumps ahead a decade and you see them as young adults--noticing how they have changed for the better or worse.Parris Mitchell (Bob Cummings) is the star of the film--especially the first half.
While Ann Sheridan did great in the film and you couldn't help but admire her performance, she was not the star of the movie.
It was upsetting to invest this much time in the movie and just have a cheap and manipulative ending.Overall, despite my many complaints about the unevenness, the great moments are so many and the film is such a wonderful showcase for Reagan and Sheridan that I strongly recommend it.
Before the surgery, I kept thinking of Ronald Reagan (Drake) in "King's Row") -- one of my favorite classic movies of all time.
Ronald Reagan is especially good in what would have to be his best film performance.
Another point to mention is Ronald Reagan's entertaining portrayal of Drake, can't remember the first name, along with the famous line; "Where's the rest of me?" All in all this is a classic movie and should be watched by all!Also, many young people complain about black and white movies being old and boring without colour without even giving them a shot.
Loved the music, Kings Row was one if his best for me, but every time I hear the opening theme it is clear where the Star Wars main march comes from.
Directed by Sam Wood, the film tells a story of Paris Mitchell (Robert Cumming) growing up in a small American town call Kings Row during the turn of the century of the 20th century.
But the film goes even further: when Parris returns to Kings Row as the new doctor, he almost have to be in the same way.
The movie does somewhat become, Ronald Reagan's movie, half way in the film since Parris goes off to study psychiatry in Vienna as Drake's life really takes a dive.
It stars Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Betty Field, and Ann Sheridan.The role of Parris was intended to be the star role and go to a big name.
With the passing of years and the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me that Ronald Reagan and Bob Cummings might have been better off in each other's roles in "Kings Row".