Movie |
Brooklyn, New York City | New York City
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Best Actor in a Supporting Role | 1946
Motion Picture | 2023
Top Ten Films | 1945
Best Writing Screenplay | 1946
According to Turner Classic Movies, Joan Blondell performed a very adult scene during the filming of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which the censors deleted from the film's final cut. The Nolan children find a condom, and her character, Aunt Sissy, is tasked with describing to them what it is. She approaches this explanation with compassion as opposed to clinical coldness. Despite the fact that this scene was omitted from the final product, Blondell always considered it the best work she ever did on screen.
After being so impressed by the dailies of the film, executives at Fox wanted to re-shoot the entire movie in Technicolor, but Elia Kazan refused.
Director Elia Kazan and Betty Smith, author of the novel the film was based on, were classmates at the Yale School of Drama.
In the June 1945 issue of Screenland Magazine costume designer Bonnie Cashin, in her column "Notes from a Designer's Diary" comments "If the average American girl could be the heroine of her own life story, and dress accordingly! This thought struck me more forcibly than it ever had before while I was fitting Dorothy McGuire for the part of Katie in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Most of the girls want to look a little glamorous on screen (and off) whether the story calls for rags or riches. Not Dorothy. A stickler for characterization, she stood for hours in her old rags and ravels, suggesting a patch here, a droop there, deliberately deglamorizing herself in order to make sure that not a single bright thread should give the lie to Katie's threadbare life. Dorothy was playing a heroine of poverty and she dressed accordingly. So should we all, in the parts we play, in make believe, or in life. Joan Blondell didn't complain, either, when as Aunt Sissy, she had to wear the sort of ugly-period-of-1914 clothes, the high-topped shoes, the blousy blouses, the too-tight corset. "Oh, Bonnie," little Peggy Ann Garner said to me when we were making Francie's clothes, "oh, Bonnie, every picture they put me in I have to wear poor girls' clothes. Can't I have one good dress?" So we gave her the white graduation dress and the red roses and Peggy Ann accepted poverty and trouped through the picture, patiently ironing her one faded cotton (and she did iron it) and well content."
According to the Sunset Garden Book, the tree that grew in Brooklyn was an Ailanthus tree, or Tree of Heaven. It has naturalized itself over much of the U.S., to the point of being considered a weed tree, but it is still invaluable as an attractive windbreak and shade tree, adaptable under the harshest conditions.
"Francie Nolan: Out the window, our tree they killed it! Johnny Nolan aka The Brooklyn Thrush: Well, would you like at that now. Francie Nolan: They didn't have any right to kill it did they papa! Johnny Nolan aka The Brooklyn Thrush: Now wait a minute. They didn't kill it. Why they couldn't kill that tree. Francie Nolan: Promise? Johnny Nolan aka The Brooklyn Thrush: Why sure baby. Don't tell me that tree is gonna lay down and die that easily. Look at that tree. See where it's coming from. Right up outta that cement! Didn't nobody plant it. Didn't ask the cement to grow. It just couldn't help growing so much it just pushed that old cement out of the way. Now when you bust it with something like that, can't anybody help it, like... like that little ole bird up there. He didn't ask anybody could he sing and he certainly didn't take any lessons. He's so full of singing it just has to bust out someplace. Why they could cut that ole tree right down to the ground and a root would push up someplace else in the cement."
"[last lines] Francie Nolan: Neeley ... Neeley Nolan: Uh-huh? Francie Nolan: Am I good-looking? Neeley Nolan: Aw, what's eatin' ya? Francie Nolan: No, honest, Neeley, I wanna know. Neeley Nolan: [after considering her for a few moments] You'll pass. Francie Nolan: You're sweet, Neeley. Neeley Nolan: Aw, cut the mush."
