I just discovered this very moving account of the career of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Its fine content and production pale in the presence of a towering performance by Louis Calhern.
I had never even heard of this film until I saw it yesterday on TCM. Louis Calhern does an excellent job portraying Holmes, and Ann Harding does a creditable job as his wife, although she is saddled with lines of insufferable banality.
Absolutely fabulous biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Louis Calhern gave a memorable performance and received his only Oscar nomination for this film.
There's not much substance here, at least in terms of the legal side of Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is more about the man as husband, with a few doses of patriotism.
Oliver Wendell Holmes is probably only on your radar if you pay a lot of attention to the Supreme Court. I had heard about him occasionally, but not being a scholar of law, I didn't know specifically what he was famous for.
If anything ever made America "great" in any way, then it surely was not its politicians, who more resemble who's who in abomination then anything else. This movie makes me mad.
Louis Calhern is superb as Oliver Wendell Holmes. The script is extraordinarily literate, and the historical conflicts seem every bit as important as they did at the time.
The story of the making of this genteel biopic is almost as quietly heartwarming as the movie itself: Louis Calhern had been giving small, perfect performances for MGM for years. He went off to Broadway to do this stately biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
I grew up in East Los Angeles so my history of Judge Oliver W Holmes is not very good. If this was a good recounting of the actual life of Holmes is unbeknown to me.
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