THE PRIMROSE PATH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 53, 28 June 1940, Page 38

THE PRIMROSE PATH

(R.K.O.) Ginger Rogers has climbed so steadily and surely up the ladder of success that few of her admirers will lose confidence in her because she has now made one slip. But she does miss the rung rather badly in "The Primrose Path." It is not altogether her own fault. Her producers should never have placed this particular rung in her ladder. It is uneven: more than that, it is slippery and grimy. More specifically, "The Primrose Path" is a sordid tale of low life in an American coastal town, unrelieved by the humour which is usually essential in such stories to take the nasty taste out of one’s mouth. The laughs are mainly sniggers, and uneasy sniggers at that. In the family round which the plot centres, Grandma (Queenie Vassar) and the mother (Marjorie Rambeau) have both deserted the primrose path of virtue with bravado and without apparent regret; and Grandma at least is chiefly concerned with leading her two grandchildren astray. To the mother’s credit, she maintains her affection for her children and her gin-sodden wretch of a husband (Miles Mander). She also maintains the whole family, and though

her means of doing so hardly bear investigation, she is an angel by comparison with Grandma, who is one of the grubbiest characters the screen has ever spewed up. Ginger Rogers is the elder grand-daughter, pig-tailed, sulky-faced Ellie May, whose journey along the straight and narrow path is beset by pitfalls. That she reaches the finale with scars on her soul but none on her virtue is due to the intervention of Joel McCrea. But it is a close call. According to what I have read, "The Primrose Path" was a good play on the American stage because it contrived to mix many grains of humour and _ philosophy among the dirt. Grandma was indeed a wicked old woman, but she did have her good points. In bringing the play to the screen, however, Hollywood seems to have kept only the dirt.