In Old Chicago (1937)

At the beginning of In Old Chicago, a post-credits title card gives acknowledgement to the assistance in historical accuracy provided by the Chicago Historical Society. However, such contributions couldn’t have been all that helpful as this is one of the first in a long line of Hollywood disaster movies that take real events and place them as backdrops against fictional stories. Such practices extend to more notable modern epics like Schindler’s List and Titanic. In this case, the infamous Chicago fire of 1871 is used as the climax for a somewhat contrived story of family feuding and political corruption.

The picture opens with the O’Leary family making their covered wagon pilgrimage towards what they hear is the grand city of Chicago. Due to almost laughable circumstances, the patriarch of the family is killed and the mother and three sons begin a life of their own in a big new city. The film then jumps ahead a few decades and focuses mainly on the rivalry between brothers Jack and Dion, the former an honest lawyer who is trying his hand at becoming politician, the latter a gambler who opens a profitable saloon and begins to garner a sizable reputation in the criminal sections of the city.

The story is decidedly inconsequential. The brothers fight, make up, disagree and resolve again. For all their melodrama, that cow still kicks over a lantern, Chicago still burns to the ground and there is still the hope of renewal. The Chicago fire was just one of many such disasters of its day, but it has become so important in American culture not because of how horrible it was, but how quickly the people came together to rebuild afterwards. The climax of In Old Chicago abruptly ends with a glimmer of this uplifting future for the city, but it is preceded by a whole movie of chaos.

Director Henry King had been making movies for over a decade before he tackled this, his most immense project to date. Despite the fact that he was one of the 36 original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, In Old Chicago was the first of his directorial efforts to receive a Best Picture nomination and he was not nominated as a director until The Song of Bernadette in 1943. That movie, along with others like Twelve O’Clock High and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing would prove to be hits for King after the success of this film, which was made with obvious confidence. What he really did best was observe events with calm control, very seldom using showy cinematic tricks. Even when In Old Chicago is at its most intense, the camera stays wide and passive, preserving the true enormity of the events being shown.

Indeed, the closing scenes depicting the fire are still intense and powerful. The disaster lasts for a solid 20 minutes and took days to shoot, costing $150,000 of the film’s over million dollar budget. Involving the actual burning of a huge studio set and hundreds of panicked extras, the fire scenes made the film one of the most costly of its day and also pretty much guaranteed its success. Even to this day, one of the principle reasons for returning to this movie is to witness the spectacle of its closing act.

In 1938, there was also a level of star power that isn’t so evident today. Tyrone Power was first cast in a lead role by Henry King for the film Lloyds of London in 1936. By the late 30s, Power would rise to popularity comparable to that of Clark Gable or Gary Cooper. In fact, there was a point in pre-production of this film when producer Darryl F. Zanuck fought to borrow Gable from MGM to compete with the success of that studio’s Gable-starring hit San Francisco. Power proved a wiser choice for Fox, displaying a remarkable presence on screen, perfectly portraying the charming cad. He remained a profitable star until the late 50s when his career was cut short by a fatal heart attack.

For the female role of Belle Hawcett, Alice Faye was cast after planned star Jean Harlow’s unexpected death the summer before shooting. Although she had not had many notable roles before, the choice worked in Fox’s favor. Faye and co-star Don Ameche would go on to appear in four more movies together. Ameche played the nice guy Jack nearly fifty years before his Oscar-winning role in Cocoon. Unfortunately, all three stars give relatively bland performances here, delivering the basic necessities of their roles, but leaving little overall impression.

A much different performance is given by Alice Brady as Molly O’Leary, the owner of that cow that started the fire. It is actually widely thought that the cow story may have well been a myth and the bulk of the film’s historical inaccuracies directly involve Mrs. O’Leary. The real woman’s name was Catherine and she had two children instead of the three in the movie, as well as a living husband and no “French Laundry” business. That doesn’t much matter when you consider the fact that Brady gives the one really convincing and memorable performance in the film, mostly because her character was written so lovable.

Brady is most fondly remembered for her wild and hilarious supporting role in My Man Godfrey, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress the year before In Old Chicago. It was for the latter that she won, though, but an illness kept her from attending the ceremony. An unknown man accepted the award on her behalf and promptly vanished without a trace.

Niven Busch’s original story was turned into a screenplay by Sonya Levien and Lamar Trotti. Though once praised, the writing now appears too barren. We are given little reason to care about anyone in the movie, because everything that happens to them is clearly filler leading up to the inevitable climax and most of the characters are strangely selfish and unlikable. Regardless, production values make up for any flaws in the story and the closing scenes are justly famous. The film made Fox quite a bundle of cash and paved the way for the director and cast to create an even bigger success the following year with Alexander’s Ragtime Band.

At the 10^th Academy Awards, In Old Chicago won Best Supporting Actress (Brady) and Best Assistant Director (Robert Webb). It was also nominated for Outstanding Production, Best Story, Best Score and Best Sound Recording.