The Hard Way

1943

Drama / Music / Romance

1
IMDb Rating 7.1/10 10 1704 1.7K

small town show business marriage stage mother

Plot summary

Helen Chernen pushes her younger sister Katherine into show business in order to escape their small town poverty.

Director

Vincent Sherman Photo
Vincent Sherman

Top cast

Dennis Morgan Photo
Dennis Morgan as Paul Collins
Harry Lewis Photo
Harry Lewis as Serious Young Man
Jody Gilbert Photo
Jody Gilbert as Anderson - Masseuse
Ben Hall Photo
Ben Hall as Ice Cream Parlor Counterman
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1004.77 MB
1280*934
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 49 min
Seeds ...
1.82 GB
1480*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 49 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by 8 / 10

Exceptional--sort of like Film Noir combined with A STAR IS BORN

This was an exceptional film--one that nearly earned a 9 and the deciding factor for me were the musical numbers which actually seemed to sometimes get in the way of the exceptional plot and acting. While this film was quite the coup for a young Joan Leslie, the real star of this film was Ida Lupino and this might just be her best performance. She plays an amoral and conniving woman who will do just about anything to make her younger sister (Leslie) a star--even use nice people like Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan to make it big. The fact that the script is so unrelenting in its way that it shows the depths to which Lupino would go made this a real standout film. Many other films of the day would have tried to soften her character more or give her a shot at redemption towards the end--a big mistake had they chosen to follow the typical formula of the day.Aside from Lupino, the other standout actor in the film seemed to be Jack Carson, as his character had much more depth and was much more sympathetic than the usual brash character he played. Also, while their acting wasn't a huge standout, Morgan really belted out some excellent songs and I was surprised to see Leslie dance as well as she did (though I wonder if it really was her doing all the flips--you CAN'T see her face and it could have been a double).Good, gritty entertainment--it's well worth a look.
Reviewed by 8 / 10

Ida Lupino excels in archetypal tinsel-and-ashes melodrama

The siren lure of show business must have had a more irresistible song in the days when stars, in the flesh, came right to towns like Pocatello, Idaho and Biloxi, Mississippi. The dreams were delivered fresh and piping hot, not through the many scrims of television and movie screens, and not through the machinations of crafty publicists and a fawning press. That's the milieu of Green Hill, a sooty steeltown where Helen Chernen (Ida Lupino) has cut her losses and her hopes until her little sister (Joan Leslie) gets a whiff of the greasepaint and hears the roar of the crowd. Lupino up and leaves her laborer husband to propel sis right to the boulevard of broken dreams. First steps on the stampede to the top are the mediocre vaudeville duo of Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan; Leslie marries Carson but leaves him in the dust at Lupino's bidding. Soon Leslie is poised to be the toast of all Broadway, but the tinsel is turning to ashes, and she's turning against her unstoppable bulldozer of a big sister. The bookends of this story told in flashback involve an ermine wrap, a pier on New York's waterfront, and a couple of New York cops....You get the idea. The Hard Way still packs a punch (after all these years), if a punch somewhat softened with a tinge of nostalgia. This is one of Lupino's strongest roles (along with Lily in Road House), and at her best she makes you wonder why she didn't achieve the superstardom of a Davis, a Hepburn, or a Stanwyck. She's just that good.
Reviewed by 8 / 10

Too many husbands!...

...And too many gray characters with the exception of Jack Carson as the sincere but simple Albert Runkel.Even the alleged villainess of the story, Helen (Ida Lupino) starts out with the best intentions. She lives in hopeless poverty in a mill town with natural surroundings that are even ugly with coal slag and air clouded with smoke bellowing from the local factories. She doesn't want to see her sister suffer her fate - loveless marriage with never enough money - so she takes her first false step. She pushes younger sister Katie into marriage with malleable vaudevillian Albert Runkel, and uses that marriage as an excuse to leave the poverty of Green Hill and her marriage behind. Poor old underachieving Sam - Helen's husband - is never mentioned again.The problem is that, over time, Helen forgets that she is doing what she is doing for Katie to get ahead. It's not enough that she get ahead, Katie has to be on top, and there is nobody too close or too vulnerable for Helen to step on to get Katie on the next rung of stardom. Eventually this becomes more about Helen's success with Katie as the golden goose that she is slowly choking to death.WB emphasizes the dramatic portion of this film rather than the musical, and that is good since the two musical numbers included are underwhelming. Fortunately, WB didn't have Joan Leslie be the centerpiece of more than one of them since singing and dancing were never her forte. Also fortunately, there is at least a number by talented WB tenor Dennis Morgan. It's just too bad that the material wasn't better.This was probably the best dramatic role Ida Lupino ever had. It's definitely worth it if you are a fan of Warner Brothers' output product in the 1940s.A question I have - Dennis Morgan is always going on as to how the dream of all humble people is a house in the country with ten kids. But how do you support ten kids in the middle of nowhere? It seems our leading man has high ideals but not many practical ones. It would have been instructive to drop in on him in ten years and see how that "dream of all humble people" was working out for him. But I digress.
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