The Late George Apley

John Marquand's sly satire of Bostonism takes still another dilution of commercialism in the film adaptation of a play that was a good novel. Progressively each of the interested parties have taken Marquand's Apley and twisted him into an inscrutable New England patriarch (the play) and now into a harmless old crone whose inner conflict is no greater than the woes of a lovelorn son and daughter. Not only is George Apley altered to fit the needs of non-New England audiences, but the aura of Beacon Hill and Louisburg Square is wrenched out of reality and transformed into a cross between a high-mannered Bedlam and meeting night at the Witch-Burners' Society.

The trouble is that Boston (or any other place) just couldn't be as nit-witted as MGM's version of it. All of the sure fire of conflict that forces the Apley of the novel to reexamine his life every time he brushes against the non-Boston world--is telescoped into two dozen or so scenes that are very inadequate. One by one the facets of Apley's life are given five-minute treatment until he becomes a predictable, uncomplicated incompetent who can be counted on for the wrong decision, or at least a carefully articulated Malapropism.

All of this is not what Marquand intended. Far from being any kind of satire, the film might convince those who have never been exposed to the local setting that Boston might do with a corps of psycho analysts. Would that it would that simple. Like the city he lived in, the original George Apley was a creature of deep conflicts and inner restlessness. Ronald Colman does no better than an imitation of any neighborhood's damn fool.

A few bleats about the social lacks of Harvard people might titillate the back country, but otherwise "George Apley" is a capsule version of a theme that requires more careful, lengthier treatment. A last glowing touch in achieved by Peggy Cummins, who plays the debutante Miss Apley aided by an Irish brogue that doesn't often grace Louisburg Square.