TCM recently showed a piece of fluff called “It Happened On Fifth Avenue.”
It’s a post-WWII movie, and how! A group of returned GIs are having a hard time finding jobs and housing. They fall in with a charming worldly bum (Victor Moore) who tells them his secret to comfortable living: in the winter, rich people leave their Manhattan mansions and move south. What’s to keep you from moving in? No one will ever know . . .
Naturally Don DeFore, one of the GIs, has hooked up with Gale Storm, who’s actually the daughter of the millionaire (Charlie Ruggles) who owns this particular mansion. A bit later, for various inane reasons, Charlie himself – the millionaire, the owner of the house – pretends to be a hobo and joins the group.
Complications (and hijinks) ensue.
The film's populist tone surprised me. Modern Hollywood would never make a film like this. The real bum (Victor Moore) is constantly lecturing the disguised millionaire (Ruggles) on his behavior. The constant message underneath is that rich people have too much stuff. They have more than one house! More than one everything! In one scene, the poor ex-GIs try to purchase an old Army barracks as part of a business deal; the rich guy beats them to it, and his fat bowler-hatted representative orders everyone off the property. The GIs, incensed, pelt the man with rotten produce (I guess they brought it with them). In a Soviet movie – like one of Sergei Eisenstein’s movies – it would have been rocks, and bullets. Here, it’s played for laughs.
Lots of myths are perpetuated here. The millionaire turns out to be a benevolent guy. The GIs are the salt of the earth. Women are all about love. Victor Moore, the career hobo, is portrayed as the best person of all: kind, thoughtful, and completely oblivious to reality.
Just like real life.
Isn’t that nice?
Honestly, this movie made my skin crawl. I had to switch away to the Jewelry Channel for a while, and look at opalite and cubic zirconia, just for a breather.
But it made me realize also that things don’t change much. It reminded me of the Occupy movement happening right now, and their outrageous notion that rich people have – unaccountably and irrationally and unfairly – too much stuff.
Who says movies aren’t educational?
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