Ten North Frederick is a 1958 American drama film starring Gary Cooper, written and directed by Philip Dunne. The screenplay is based on the 1955 novel of the same name by John O'Hara.
Plot
In April 1945, outside the titular address in the fictional town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a radio reporter is describingg the funeral of distinguished attorney Joseph Chapin. While his shrewish wife Edith delivers his eulogy, daughter Ann thinks back to Joe's fiftieth birthday celebration five years earlier.
Via a flashback, we learn rebellious ne'er-do-well son Joby has been expelled from boarding school and wants to pursue a career as a jazz musician, a decision Edith feels will harm the family's reputation. The ambitious woman is determined to get Joe elected lieutenant governor, and she uses her wealth, political connections, and social influence to achieve her goal.
Threatening this ambition is Ann's secret marriage to trumpet player Charley Bongiorno, who seduced and impregnated the naive girl.
Corrupt power broker Mike Slattery and district attorney Lloyd Williams intervene. They threaten to charge Charley with statutory rape if he refuses to accept their bribe and agree to an annulment. Shortly after, Ann suffers a miscarriage, and when she learns her father condoned the deal that drove her husband away, she leaves home and moves to New York City.
Fearing repercussions from Ann's situation, party leaders refuse to back Joe in the election. He withdraws from the race, much to Edith's dismay. Angry with her husband, she reveals she once had an affair with Lloyd and bitterly tells him she wasted her life ministering to a failure.
Deeply depressed by the turn of events, Joe begins to drink heavily. On a business trip, he meets Ann's roommate, model Kate Drummond. The two fall into a relationship, and during a weekend getaway Joe presents her with a ruby, a Chapin family heirloom.
When the young woman's friends mistake Joe for her father, he realizes that he's unable to handle their huge age difference and ends the affair.
Joe's alcoholism takes its toll on his health but he refuses medical attention. Learning her father is dying, Ann returns home. Joe asks her about Kate. She tells him her roommate is about to wed, although she suspects Kate in love with another man. Just before he dies, Joe realizes the man is himself.
At the funeral, Joby angrily accuses Slattery of betrayal and Edith of being responsible for Joe's decline. Later, just prior to Kate's wedding, Ann is helping her friend pack when she finds the ruby. She realizes her father was Kate's true love and that he managed to experience a brief period of happiness during his final years.
Cast
Critical reception
In his review in the New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote that the film "has been so sharply reduced in scope from what it was in the novel and the backgrounds of its people have been so pruned that it fails to explain the whys of their troubles, into the middle of which we're suddenly thrown. This appears to be the fault of the writer-director, Philip Dunne. He has tried to do too much with visual shorthand . . . He barely introduces his hero . . . before he is bouncing us through three disappointments in the fellow's fifty-first year and then having him meet a beautiful model for a brief and futile fling at romance . . . The production has class and distinction in black-and-white CinemaScope, but the drama itself lacks those virtues." [1]
According to Variety: "The screen telling of the John O'Hara novel sacrifices detail and explanation at some loss to audience satisfaction." [2]
TV Guide awarded it 2½ out of a possible four stars and called it "a confusing movie from a complex book with a performance by Cooper that almost manages to save the story." [3]
Awards
Ten North Frederick was named Best Feature Film at the Locarno International Film Festival.
References
External links
