Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), the author of six novels that were turned into movies showing tonight on TCM, was the first American to win a Nobel Prize, and also copped a Pulitzer (which he refused) for “Main Street.”
Tonight’s tribute provides an opportunity to reconsider Lewis, whose neglected work seems largely to be considered tragically unhip by contemporary academics. If Lewis (pictured above at right at MGM with John Erskine, Michael Arlen and John Van Druten) is remembered at all by the public, he’s often confused with the similarly named Upton Sinclair, the source for “There Will be Blood.”
It’s not as if Hollywood always showed Lewis respect even when he was alive and a best-selling novelist.
Take the seldom-seen “Babbitt” (1934), which kicks off the evening at 8 p.m. EST. Very loosely based on Lewis’ almost plotless 1922 classic, it’s a vehicle for Warner Bros. stalwart Guy Kibbee, usually seen in supporting roles in “A” pictures. Kibbee was born to play Lewis’ glad-handing realtor, who in this version is caught in both a breach of promise suit and a real-estate scandal.
The wonderful Aline McMahon, often cast opposite the much-older Kibbee (most notably in “Golddiggers of 1933”) is top-billed as Babbitt’s long-suffering and much smarter wife, who frequently gets him out of jams. Despite the novel’s fame William Keighley’s much more lighthearted movie (which ditches most of the novel’s satire and all of its cynicism) was advertised as a followup to an earlier McMahon-Kibbee teaming, “Big Hearted Herbert.”
The character of Babbitt (who became such a synonym for mindless boosterism that you can see the musical number “The Babbitt and the Bromide” with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in “The Ziegfeld Follies” and “That’s Entertainment!”) reappears, perfectly played by ace character actor Edward Andrews, in “Elmer Gantry,” perhaps the best-known Lewis film adapation these days (and the most recent to date), which is almost perversely not included in tonight’s tribute.
John Cromwell’s more faithful adaption of “Ann Vickers” (also 1934), starring Irene Dunne and Walter Huston as a social worker and a married judge follows.
Huston also stars in the finest of the films derived from Lewis, William Wyler’s “Dodsworth” (1936) with Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor outstanding as his wife and mistress in this quintessential story of idle, rich Americans abroad. Gregory Peck tried unsuccessfully to mount a remake in the early ’80s, which tells you how far out of fashion Lewis had fallen by that point. Even producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr., who fabled father produced the original, told me he thought the film was dated.
But Lewis was a huge deal when John Ford, no less, brought “Arrowsmith” (1930) to the screen for Goldwyn Sr. Ronald Colman plays the crusading doctor, Helen Hayes his wife and Mryna Loy has one of her first good roles as the woman who tempts him. Unfortunately, the film apparently only survives in prints from post-Code reissues.
George Sidney’s glossy MGM melodrama “Cass Timberlane” (1947) from one of Lewis’ later works, stars Spencer Tracy as a judge who courts gossip when he marries a younger woman (Lana Turner) from the wrong side of the tracks.
“I Married a Doctor” (1936), tonight’s last film, is an alias for the second screen version of Lewis’ “Main Street,” which had been filmed as a silent. The 1934 “Babbitt,” also a remake, had not been a box-office success, so Warners downplayed the Lewis byline for this version with Pat O’Brien and Josephine Hutchinson, directed by Archie Mayo. Even if Lewis won a Pulitzer for this novel.