Stefan Dubechek, an immigrant from Central Europe, arrives in America in the 1890s and travels to the Midwest, where he joins his cousin Anton working in the steel mills. There he meets Anna, whom he woos and eventually marries.
Through hard work and study, Stefan becomes a foreman at a steel plant. He buys an automobile, and is frustrated by its poor performance. He disassembles the car, and with the help of Howard Clinton, a teacher at his son's high school, he determines what is wrong with it. Stefan and Howard become partners in an automobile company. Stefan's youngest son Teddy goes to work for them, and rather than join the executive ranks he starts at the "bottom" and becomes involved in union activities.
With Teddy's help, the workers in the auto plant organize. Stefan strongly opposes the union effort, but is outvoted by his board of directors. He retires. During World War II, his company manufacturers war planes and Stafan returns to the business.
The film is interspersed with documentary footage, and concludes with B-17s Flying Fortreses being built at Douglas Aircraft factory.[3][4]
The film was part of a trilogy directed and produced by King Vidor consisting of war, wheat and steel. His films on war and wheat were The Big Parade (1925) and Our Daily Bread (1934). This was to be his steel industry epic film.[5]
Vidor came up with the story which he proposed to Eddie Mannix. Vidor then sent a telegram to author Louis Adamic, who wrote on the topic of immigration and labor. A The screenplay was ultimately credited to Herbert Dalmas and William Ludwig, representing a long list of contributing writers, including John Fante, and alternate titles.[6]
The film's working titles were America, This Is America, An American Story, American Miracle and The Magic Land.[8]
Vidor said "This project was a big love of mine for many years, I had many ideas: from the earth up into the air—lift—and doing it by colour, by the development and use of colour. And then it was the earth, the heavy earth, iron ore, getting more refined, more refined, until it finally flew into the sky as an airplane, you see, and only up, and it was all of America."[9]
Vidor initially wanted to cast Spencer Tracy as Steve Dangos, Ingrid Bergman as Anna and Joseph Cotten as the lead character's friend Howard Clinton. All three were unavailable, so cast in their place were Brian Donlevy as Dangos and Walter Abel as Howard Clinton.[10][11] " I wasn't enough politician to be up front at the lunchroom and I got secondary casting," he said.[9] However in his memoirs he said he tested both Donlevy and Richards and "they came up surprisingly well. They were made up and tested in all the various ages from youth to full maturity called for in the script, and they gave performances of striking conviction.[12]
Vidor later said that he felt that Donlevy was miscast as Steve Dangos because he was known for playing "blunt and blustering" characters.[13]
Frances Gifford and Ann Sothern were reportedly considered for the role of Anna but Australian actress Ann Richards was chosen after principal photography began in April 1943.[8] Vidor said Richards was "a girl they wanted to develop" and that he justified it to himself as he was a "company man" who had been on salary without working for a year.[14]
An American Romance took fifteen months to complete and its final budget totaled at $3,000,000.[15][16]
Reception
The film was shown at a preview screening in Inglewood, California. The original cut was 151 minutes which Louis B. Mayer praised but still chose to remove thirty minutes after complaints from theater managers that the film was too long. It is unknown if the edited footage still survives.[17][18]
Vidor was not happy with the cuts as he felt they hurt the story.[19]
An American Romance made its world premiere in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 11, 1944, opened in New York City on November 12, 1944, and in Los Angeles on December 13, 1944.[8] The film received mixed reviews and was a financial failure.[20] King Vidor refused to work for MGM again.[19] He later wrote about the film in his 1953 autobiography A Tree Is a Tree:
I was determined to tell the story of steel from the viewpoint of an eager immigrant in 'An American Romance' ... When the picture was previewed in Inglewood, Louis B. Mayer came to me on the sidewalk in front of the theater, put his arm around my shoulders and said, 'I've just seen the greatest picture our company ever made'. However, an order came from the New York office to cut half an hour. They cut the human elements of the story instead of the documentary sections, explaining that this was the only way a half hour could be taken out without complications in the musical soundtrack. In other words, the film was edited according to the soundtrack and not according to the inherent story values. At the lowest emotional level I have reached since I have been on Hollywood, I went to my office, packed up and moved out of the studio. The picture was not a box office success. Many of the inhabitants of Hollywood and Beverly Hills have never seen the film and many do not even know it was made. I spent 3 years of my life on the project and MGM spent close to $3,000,000.[21]
King Vidor later said:
The picture was spoilt for me by Brian Donlevy and by the girl (Ann Richards), who was not very exciting, and by the cutting. I took a lot out of it, and then the studio cut it against my wishes, taking out things that 1 didn't think should be cut and leaving in things that could have been cut. Also, to avoid re-dubbing and re-doing the music, they cut by where the music ended, and that was just ruinous. The other thing was, I had it very heavy on the documentary side, and when I went out on the road with it in the Middle West I discovered that we should keep all the human story and cut down more on the documentary story. But in the cutting they did the reverse: they cut the human story and kept all the documentary stuff So that's when I left M-G-M and never went back.[9]
Vidor later reflected "Donlevy gives a fine performance but as a star he does not symbolize that intangible element that would have lifted the role to greatness."[22]
Writer William Ludwig said "It was a fabulous picture at about four and a half hours" but "it was cut in half, to two hours and seven minutes. One whole enormous sequence I had to take out and make it an announcement on the radio. It doesn't give you much left to work with. But King was a great director."[23]
MGM recorded a loss of $1.7 million on the film.[2]
