MovieChat Forums > Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo Discussion > Phyllis Thaxter is the most wooden actre...

Phyllis Thaxter is the most wooden actress ever seen


The reviewer who said this was the best World War II film ever has got to be kidding. Some of the footage is good and authentic but the film is overlong overacted propaganda. Phyllis Baxter must have been paid per smile - she is nothing short of an embarassment each time she appears on screen and drags the picture down with her - she subsequently had a long career and presumably learnt her craft later but this was a shocking apprenticeship

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Try again -- Phyllis played the kind of woman that men wanted to return to from the war. Her whispered -- "God be with you" -- as her husband's plane leaves Florida is tear-inducing. She was wonderful in the role, and the film is terrific. Oh, and it's Thaxter, not Baxter.


"Howdy, Bub"

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I disagree with you- I just watched the movie on TCM , and she did a great job. I certainly would't say wooden.

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She wasn't that wooden, but she was definitely sappy in her portrayal of Ellen.

In fact, the real Ellen Lawson, decades later, joked about how suggary she and Ted were portrayed in the film. She said they were definitely in love, but never carried on like the film showed. I think she said that their children and grandchildren groaned when watching the Ted/Ellen scenes in the film. LOL

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Come on everyone, it's a story. A story of a great historical and heroic event. The movie makers chose to portray the wives as ordinary looking girls back home. Not as Hollywood raving beauties. Phyliss Thaxter did a fine job in her role. Maybe even a bit over the top in the romance department...per the script. Just a bit of trivia in case no one else caught it. Phyliss's first movie role was the wife of a great flyer...Ted Lawson. Her last career movie role was as the mother of another great flyer...Superman! She portrayed her last role very nicely.

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One of my favorite actresses from that era, Phyllis lit up the room when she smiled. She was perfect for this role. IMHO.
KS

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Just about any and every actress in 1944 would have played it the way Phyllis did. She probably also had to do it the way the director wanted. But this was a film about flying, and probably most guys paid no attention to anything but the flying scenes. Very authentic flying scenes in my experience, even with my experience being 20 years and more later.

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I find the analysis of the character as spot on, but I'm not sure it's fair to blame the actor. I think the director and the writers got exactly what they were after with this portrayal. She was forced to portray a somewhat dim-witted wifey with no life of her own beyond her marriage to her husband.

That sort of manifestation looks especially dated in the current era. One cannot watch TSOT without gaining an appreciation of the quite alien manners of conducting oneself that were prevalent when this movie was fresh.

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I always fast-forward through the "romantic" sequences of this movie, but agree it was more the fault of the wooden script.

Despite his limited appearances in the movie as Doolittle, I regard this as one of Spencer Tracy's best performances. He underplays the part to perfection and you really believe he IS Doolittle.

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I don't think she was wooden, but she was awful. But, she was probably doing what the director told her, so I'm not sure she's really to blame.

I watched it last night and almost couldn't take her, because her character was so overbearingly annoying and drippy. I kept thinking, "Okay, one day somebody told her she was cute when her eyes crinkled and she hasn't spent five seconds of her life doing anything else since." She smiled so much it wasn't even cute anymore, it started to become horrific, like something that'd jump out at you in a funhouse. They even had her smiling in her freaking SLEEP, ferchrissakes. And if Van Johnson had asked her one more freakin' time "How come you're so cute?" I'd have thrown myself through a window.

A lot of this movie was GREAT -- the raid on Japan was one of the most intense things I've seen in a war movie from that time period -- but the stateside romance stuff was horribly, horribly written. I don't know what Dalton Trumbo's problem was, but things were really getting ridiculous. Dialogue started breaking down in favor of mush so much that during one dance scene a woman was literally saying nothing but "I love you, I love you, I love you!" I'm like, damn, dude, we GET IT ALREADY. I understand they wanted to establish that these guys were leaving a lot behind to do their dangerous mission, but, sheesh, underplay it just a LITTLE, wouldja?

The capper to the whole corny deal? The guy drawing a sketch of a mother putting apple pies on a windowsill while he's gone on a bombing raid. That was so overbearing I laughed for about five minutes when I saw that.

Overall a good movie, but somebody seriously should've put a leash on whoever was in charge of the romance angle, and limited Phyllis to a maximum of three huge cheesy smiles per hour.

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I was wondering if anyone else was going nuts over those EYES! LOLOL You probably nailed it! I was wondering if her eyes would open at all....it was completely bizarre. She shut her eyes, squeezing them crazily in every embrace.

The posters here have the description perfect, as well--"sappy." It was over-the-top, no doubt. But they were trying to achieve that teary-eyed, drippy nose feeling in movie-goers...viewers who must have had several relatives and close friends away from home in the war, where they could die or be injured--if not in combat, or attacks on ships and aircraft, then in accidents, etc.

So, when you watch movies made during WWII, you have to expect them to pull your heart-strings, try to cause tears, evoke super patriotism, "My country right or wrong." In WWII, they wanted you to do without your nylon/silk stockings, coffee, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, meat, makeup, hair care, new clothing, new shoes, new cars, new furniture...conserve on electricity, gas, coal, wood, etc... My mom said all the girls in her nurse's training drew lines down the back of their legs with a pen so it looked like they had stockings on (stockings had seams in those days that went up the middle of the back of your leg)!

The factories that made things that were a luxury were converted to making things for the war effort, like uniforms, rope, canvas backpacks, sleeping bags and pup tents for soldiers, jeeps, boats of every size, ammunition, bombs, guns, what have you--with the men at war, there was a lot less money to spend on luxuries anyway, and business owners still needed an income. Cargo ship crews would have to risk lives to bring many items from Central and South America in the face of German submarines hunting them down, or islands in the South Pacific where Japanese forces were in control. Raw materials were scarce, Europe was producing nothing. Movies were expected to make Americans not want these things, be happy without them, and spend their money on war bonds instead. Perhaps go to work in one of the factories.

The fact is, when someone is going away whom you love, and it's early in your relationship (young love so intense that you hate to be physically separated at all), you do get sappy. These were very young couples, and likely first physical relationships, newlyweds. Add to that these men are flying old farm equipment with propellers off a carrier (which had not been done before) in the middle of the Pacific during a world war, and you will be really really sappy. They know they might think back on this all their lives as their last dance, or their last goodbye. So they say, "I love you." too often...people probably do. Esp young people who are drinking (at a time alcohol was probably very scarce and they had not drank much of it in their young lives.)

My aunts and uncles had marriages from that generation, and they were extremely close. Never said a bad word about each other in 50-60 years of marriage. My parents were that way, but in my mom's family it was 2 out of 3. My uncle died 5 weeks after my aunt...a broken heart. He could not go on without her. That generation had a very sappy thing going in more relationships than not.

I thought it was something else that they sang to each other while dancing...if couples did that in reality, then it's case closed. Over the top. But not unexpected. If anyone had a right to get sappy, it's young newlyweds who are drunk and had little experience with drinking, or pregnant and hormones rushing, their last night together before the men go on a very dangerous mission that had never been tried before...potentially fatal in many ways. The eyes on Mrs. Lawson needed some aircraft glue to hold them open. But the others have excuses that rate pretty high. We only had one relationship's story in the movie--we were not forced to watch every man say goodbye. He lost a leg, wrote the book the movie is based on. That is not much. People complain less when the lead characters in modern dramas develop relationships with strangers and we watch 10 minutes of sexual goodbyes that have no emotional connection at all.

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Every time she would appear on the screen, I would cringe. But wooden is not the best word to describe her. Sappy would be it. That smile of hers got on my nerves.

She's the only flaw I saw in this otherwise great film!

"Let us be crooked, but never common."

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