A review
Carol Schaye
No work of fiction has ever stunned me, made me reflect, and horrified me as the novel, “Babbitt”, by Sinclair Lewis. Published in 1922 it was made into films on two different occasions. First a silent film, then a 1934 adaptation of Lewis’s masterpiece. I watched this film with expectation, as I had never forgotten the novel’s effect on me fifty years ago. “Babbitt” (the novel) helped liberate me from middle-class mediocrity.
There is a continuing debate about whether Lewis was satirical in this novel. I found it serious and given Lewis’s life works and points of view, I consider it a warning, if not a depiction of the meaninglessness of an existentially empty life.
This is a film, based on a novel, which amongst other novels, won Lewis the Nobel Prize for literature. My reference to ‘horrifying me’ does not refer to slasher-type events, but to the dissection of middle-class American lives that Lewis captured brilliantly. Babbitt is aspiring to move up the ladder of finance and prestige with little thought to motivation other than competition. Although his house is lovely, he wants a bigger house to impress others. The hero of Lewis’s tale, Babbitt, reminds me of people I see in stores carrying pocketbooks with names of expensive fashion designers, having paid a week’s salary to impress no one, uncertain if they like that purse or were told to like it. External show as opposed to internal meaning has dictated their choices.
“At odd moments he senses that something is missing, that he’s buried his early impulses toward a larger, more meaningful existence.” Sinclair Lewis
This quote along with the novel it is in, has become part of the lexicon of the American language. Calling someone a Babbitt is, in some circles, an insult.
The novel from which the film was made has been a subject of debate since it was first published in 1922. Is it satire or is it meant as reality? There is no definitive answer to this question. What is known is that Lewis wrote other books, “Main Street” for example, which looked at middle-class American life with a less than complimentary but ultimately tragic eye.
Having started my life planning to be an actress, appearing on television and any stage that would have me, starting at age ten years old, I never felt I belonged in any group until I met theater folk in New York City. The feeling that something was “missing” before that experience, was all too familiar to me. For some (my mother), I had achieved the American dream, married a wealthy brilliant physician, had a country farm and a city flat, graduated college, and had a smart lovely daughter. Friends of mine were envious of my achievements.
Caught up in the murky morass of middle-class mediocrity it took serious soul searching to realize I was wasting my one spin in life, conforming to what I had been raised to believe is the American dream. That I believe is the theme of, “Babbitt”.
Babbitt, the hero of the novel and film begins to realize his life is vacuous, when his best friend from college, shoots (but does not kill) his wife. Babbitt, during what might be called a midlife crisis, meets a lovely, somewhat radical young woman, who reminds him of his earlier dreams and starts him on a journey of exploration. Rather than spoil the novel or film for you I won’t say where he heads and if he retreats to his structured idle middle-class conformity or not. I was unable to and for that, I am forever grateful. Acting led me to other art forms (writing amongst them) and continued acquaintances with other folks who didn’t fit into the boxes of middle-class America. Not all of the folks on my journey are artists but the ones I’m attracted to simply will not comply because they are told to.
“The most grievous victim of his militant dullness who secretly longed for freedom and romance”. H.L.Menken speaking of the character Babbitt.
When a novel or any piece of writing influences not only me but millions of Americans to think twice, it is worthy of a serious read as well as a serious film. The film made in 1934 is not up to Lewis’s brilliant insights.
Paul Riesling, Babbitt’s old college roommate, played by actor Minor Watson, captures the despair of a musician who surrenders to the life of a compliant businessman, married to a disgruntled complaining wife. His sullen sympathetic performance is in contrast to the bombastic performance of Guy Bridges Kibbee, who plays Babbitt. Riesling and Babbitt remain friends as they both forego their youthful, dreams for middle-class life. I wanted to see more of Watson and less of Kibbee. Watson might have made a better Babbitt if he could have captured Babbitt before he began to have insight.
“I’m a stage actor by heart and by profession. I was a movie star by necessity and a desire to eat”. Minor Watson
Kibbee portrays Babbitt with one almost shouting note. As the hero of this film, we have to sympathize with Babbitt but Kibbee lets us down. Lewis did not let us down in his novel. I recommend reading it before watching this film.
The women in this film are depicted as having one main theme, with little subtlety. Lewis’s novel depicts women with layers, although there is a bias against them. They are not the caricatures depicted in this film. I wish a filmmaker would remake this novel into a film with the subtlety and vitriol Lewis wrote in his novel.
Mrs. Babbitt played by Aline MacMahon was boring (Lewis wrote her that way).
In 1922 MacMahon was a member of the Neighborhood Playhouse company in Manhattan, just as Konstantin Stanislavski‘s Moscow Art Theatre visited New York for a legendary tour. Accolades poured in for the MAT’s performances, and the executives of the Neighborhood Playhouse
made arrangements to charter the first teaching class of the Method in America, which Aline attended with nine others. Aline MacMahon took the tenets of the Method very seriously. Being a game-changer in life, MacMahon had to dummy down to play this part in the film.
This film was made as the country recovered from the “Great Depression.” Worried about box office attendance it was turned into a fluffy, brief, not very serious depiction of the middle-class Lewis had written.
Director, William Keighley is listed as one of the best directors ever on the Internet movie database, leaving me wondering what went so wrong with this adaptation of Lewis’s work. The absence of Babbitt’s thoughts and insights, so important in the novel, as he realizes how he has wandered from his dreams in life, reduces the story to a man’s crisis without reason. Studios had more power at the time this film was made, and I wonder if the topic was too controversial for the studio to address fully.
When I bought my first house, on my own, my real estate person remarked, “You are very un-American, most Americans buy the biggest houses they qualify for, thinking their homes are their showplaces to the world.” That’s when I realized I had arrived, surprised that someone might be my friend based on the size of my house or the number of my possessions, rather than the meaning that drove my behavior toward others and the choices I made for conducting my life.
While researching this film it came to my attention that this past year a stage adaptation of “Babbitt” had been produced at La Jolla Playhouse, starring Mathew Broderick. The reviews I read considered the same issues that plagued Kibbee who played Babbitt in the film. How to address the awakening of the character’s meaninglessness in life?
You can read a review of that presentation here.
Skip the film but read the book, “Babbitt”. Lewis wrote a life-altering novel.
Carol Schaye has had several short stories published by McFadden’s Women’s Group, Sierra Nevada Ally and other publications. Carol has written for two west coast newspapers and has worked extensively in television. A fan of Flannery O’Connor, Carol studied acting with Lee Strasberg and Austin Pendleton and writing with Salem Ludwig. She attended Marymount College majoring in theater.
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