by Patricia Perry
At the age of 12, I first pulled down a copy of Betty Smith’s beloved novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from a school library shelf. Like many a sensitive young reader had done, before and since that day, I fell in love with Smith’s poignantly detailed account of tenement life as experienced by one struggling family, and claimed its central character, Francie Nolan, as a literary soulmate.
Seventy-two years after its initial publication, Smith’s semi-autobiographical work remains cherished and widely read, routinely included in lists of great American novels and “Books to Read Before You Die.” And the opening credits of this 1945 adaptation clue us into its literary pedigree right away: the name “Betty Smith” entirely fills the first title card, before we ever see the words “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”
The film’s other claim to fame is that it was director Elia Kazan’s first feature-length film, and it is an impressive debut. In its honest, unsentimental depiction of the Nolans’ struggles, we can see the first seeds of the socially conscious filmmaking that Kazan would come to be known for.
Francie Nolan, a character created from Smith’s own experiences growing up in the immigrant slums of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, is a sensitive, starry-eyed bookworm – the type of child who presses a favorite book to her chest while sighing in ecstasy or makes impassioned, teary-eyed declarations in the classroom that confound her exasperated, overworked teachers. She deeply loves her charming alcoholic father, Johnny, responding to his flights of imaginative fancy and his gregarious personality with wholehearted affection. Still a child, she cannot yet grasp the toll her father’s drinking and unreliable employment have taken on his marriage and the family’s finances. Late in the film, after her father falls ill and dies while looking for work, Francie sobs out loud to God that “no one else loved him like I did,” which is both true and untrue. Francie’s love for her father is idealized and untainted by disappointment, while her mother’s deep love of her husband is complicated by her resentment at being the family’s breadwinner and ‘granite rock.’ (Both Johnny and his wife, Katie, want their ‘nice kids’ to have opportunities and do well in life, but only Katie is clear-eyed and realistic about their chances.)
As film adaptations of great books go, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is, to my mind, one of the very finest. Screenwriters Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis trimmed the extraneous details and expunged the story’s racier elements (such as digressions about neighborhood perverts that wouldn’t have been allowed in a 1945 film anyway), but faithfully retained details from the book’s opening chapters: a lengthy and lovingly recreated Saturday in the lives of the characters. (Some scenes in this section – Francie and her brother Neely selling scrap metal for coins, buying penny chances on a prize at the candy shop, and so on – are so perfunctory as to be confusing to those who haven’t read the book).
The heart of both the book and the film is the Nolan family’s struggle to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table while finding some moments of happiness and hope amid their troubles. But where Smith’s novel was exhaustively detailed with characters’ back stories and vignettes of daily life in Williamsburg, the film effectively distills the story to focus on Francie’s coming-of-age conflict between trusting her father’s never-ending pipe dreams or accepting her hard-working mother’s command of practical reality. Her turning point towards adulthood is signaled by a conversation with a kind teacher who warns her that “Pipe dreamers can be very lovable people, but they don’t help anybody. Not even themselves.”
While A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is undeniably heartbreaking in many places, it is not unrelentingly sad. It’s shot through with an underlying coziness and an authentic sense of familial affection among the Nolans and their extended clan. This is particularly evident in the scene where Johnny returns home late (and sober) from working a wedding reception, bearing bits and bobs of leftover lobster, caviar and French cheese and spinning elaborate yarns about the elegance of the venue and the beauty of the bride to entertain Kate and the children. It’s a genuine feel-good scene that establishes the loving connections between the four family members.
Kazan was always a great director of actors, and he elicited some stellar performances from his cast. Peggy Ann Garner, who plays Francie, lacks the superficial cuteness and affectation of most child actresses of the era. Earnest and natural, her performance has both an innate intelligence and emotional transparency. (Garner won a Juvenile Academy Award for her performance, a patronizing sort of mini-Oscar given in the pre-Tatum O’ Neal era when whippersnappers were not allowed to compete alongside adults for the real honors. ) James Dunn’s Johnny Nolan is a beautifully realized, almost unbearably poignant turn. Dunn, himself a recovering alcoholic making a comeback, is by turns incandescent and deeply melancholy and has a touching and entirely authentic chemistry with Garner. Dorothy McGuire was, at first glance, an unusual choice for the role of Katie; although Smith described Katie as slight and pretty, she is also repeatedly referred to as “hard’ and there is a distinct sense that Katie’s hard work and impoverished life have taken some bloom off the rose. McGuire usually looks radiant and younger than her 26 years, but ultimately she more than meets the emotional demands of the role. Rounding out the lead ensemble is Joan Blondell as Katie’s black sheep sister, bringing a sense of naughty fun, tempered with unexpected emotional depths, that nicely balances McGuire’s earnestness.
