No Sad Songs for Me (1950) User Reviews

Life's Final Months

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 25 February 2009]

No Sad Songs For Me expresses what Margaret Sullavan wishes when she learns she has terminal cancer. She thinks she's pregnant, but that's the verdict from her doctor John McIntire. Her problem is now how best to arrange her life's final months.

She'll be leaving behind husband Wendell Corey and daughter Natalie Wood. And Sullavan has an interesting problem on her hands in the person of Viveca Lindfors, a new employee for her surveyor husband. There's a growing attraction between them and normally that would call for claws to come out. But Sullavan is thinking of Wood as well and face it Lindfors is a nice person who's not doing anything to encourage Corey.

As for Wendell he's behaving like a perfect gentleman, but the signs are there.

This is a fine and literate adult drama about a woman facing terminal illness and looking to make the best of it for herself and her family. Sullavan who mostly played tragic roles on screen gives her farewell big screen performance in No Sad Songs For Me. She did do television and stage work until her suicide in 1960.

In fact all the members of that screen family ended badly. Natalie Wood drowned way too young and Wendell Corey became a misanthropic alcoholic who died too young of liver cancer. Read Kirk Douglas's memoir The Ragman's Son to find out about how Corey's career turned bad.

But in this film all the players give strong performances and the film never turns maudlin. That final shot with Lindfors and Wood with Sullavan's shadow looming over them is unforgettable.

Sublime Sullavan Makes Her Swan Song Worthwhile

[EUyeshima · 8/10 · 21 November 2011]

No actress during the golden age of Hollywood handled death with more soulful dignity than Margaret Sullavan, an actress unjustly forgotten even though she gave peerless performances in MGM classics like Frank Borzage's "Three Comrades" and Ernst Lubitsch's "The Shop Around the Corner". This modestly budgeted 1950 sudser was her last film, a decade before her own untimely death from a drug overdose. This was one of only sixteen Sullavan made since she preferred acting on stage rather than celluloid, which was a shame since she was utterly sublime no matter what the vehicle. In this appropriate swan song, Sullavan plays Mary Scott, a suburban wife and mother who learns too late that she is dying of cancer. Director Rudolph Maté holds the camera on the veteran actress for long takes as she reacts to this news.

Maté lets her mercurial moods dictate the tone of the film and allows Mary to find a way to die in the most mature way possible. This is where the insightful screenplay by Howard Koch ("Casablanca") rates a cut above similar-minded soap operas. Witness the adult way he has Mary deal with her husband Brad's infidelity and her pragmatic approach in setting up Brad's assistant-turned-mistress, a serious-minded Norwegian draftsperson named Chris, as her successor in the family. While Mary's selflessness is likely to look excessive by contemporary standards, Sullavan brings such an affecting combination of pathos and intelligence to her character that she transcends the innate limitations of the material, including a few predictable turns like a high-speed drive on a deserted highway and a comically drunken scene in an all-night diner.

She even has a couple of moments where she gets to recreate famous dramatic cues from "Three Comrades" such as her irritation at the ticking of an alarm clock and her valiant struggle to get out of bed. Character actor Wendell Corey does a fine job as Brad as does Viveca Lindfors ("The Way We Were") as early feminist Chris, although their affair is severely downplayed to appease 1950 censors. At 11, Natalie Wood was still five years away from "Rebel Without a Cause", but she manages to play Mary and Brad's precocious daughter with aplomb. The film has a low-budget look about it, but it doesn't take away from Sullavan's artistry which is on full display here. To the strains of Brahms' "Symphony no. 1 in C minor", the last scene packs the necessary emotional wallop even though you know the film's outcome from nearly the beginning. There is a newly remastered print on the 2011 DVD release.

Six Months is a Lot of Time: In Minutes...

[mark.waltz · 8/10 · 24 February 2013]

There's no time for songs when you've got less than a year to live, and for wife and mother Margaret Sullavan, finding out that she has cancer and only six to ten months of a productive life left has her setting the wheels in motion of how she intends to finish off her life with dignity, concentrating on continuing the lives of husband Wendell Corey and daughter Natalie Wood. When rumors of an affair between Corey and his assistant Viveca Lindfors circulate within her social circle, Sullavan puts a plan in motion that will move the future forward.

This most delightful of tearjerkers isn't so much sad as it is moving. Here is a woman of such pure unselfishness who isn't prideful to not see the importance of her mission, and see the years ahead she won't physically be a part of. After surviving the material trappings of wife Joan Crawford in "Harriett Craig" and fight the fury of Barbara Stanwyck in the same year's "The Furies", Corey took on a gentler partner with Ms. Sullavan here. She gives a bravura performance as that most laughable of 30's movie heroines: the completely noble wife, but with the onslaught of time and lots of tougher, more manipulative females, Sullavan's lady is a delightful change of pace. Corey still has that brick wall acting style, but this time, he's not a sap, so the result is a somewhat stronger performance.

Lindfors, wasted during the film's first three quarters with small appearances here and there, strongly brings her character to life in the last quarter, making you see why Corey would be tempted by her, and understand why Sullavan might choose her as a potential replacement. This is evidenced in a scene where Sullavan visits her home town and runs into a male widowed friend who is now involved with a selfish harpy. Wood manages not to inflict too much pre-teen obnoxiousness into this character, making her more real for a change and not a pain in the neck that on occasion in her roles could make you wince every time she came on screen.

As far as women's pictures go, many of them attempt to manipulate the audience's emotions, but this one steers clear of that path. This can be attributed to a better than average screenplay and Sullavan's believable portrayal of a wonderful woman fighting for a dark victory with dignity and class.

beautiful tearjerker

[prjdean · 27 April 2007]

Too bad the early reviewer could not appreciate this beautifully acted melodrama. This movie is a lovely swansong for Margaret Sullavan's career - she always excelled at this kind of material(as well as wry comedy)and she is pitch perfect as the dying wife & mother . All the performers do exemplary work - Wendell Corey is winning and sympathetic as Brad; Viveca Lindfors makes a very difficult role as the other woman understandable & touching; and Natalie Wood makes young Polly a very lovable daughter. Only the hardest of hearts can watch the last scene without shedding a tear - "Polly, do you remember what your mother said when she left?" "No... I only remember she smiled" ! ---highly recommended

Not a bad movie

[roblanious · 6/10 · 7 September 2008]

I fail to see how the movie was sexist or racist considering the timeframe. In fact, the movie shows a woman can perform well in a position tradionally held by men. Only recently up into the 70s were women being comepletely accepted in male dominated positions. Only recently were MDs required to give honest brutal but truthful information to their patients. They would withold some information if they felt is was beneficial to their patient. As far as patient confidentiality goes. HIPAA was not around then and a husband just as entitled to know about his wife's medical condition as she was. As far as a husband developing an affair with a coworker. Where and when does that not take place today? In fact, this movie may have predicted a complication of coed workforces that were not too common back then. It doesn't take much of a brain and a tiny bit of history to understand the setting of this movie. Now speaking from a medical professional, I can say the death was a little too clean for a person dying of cancer, but back then showing such misery and horror was frowned upon. Look at how people died in war movies back then. She would have shown progressive weight loss, signs of anemia, growing weakness, etc. But, even now I see people who seem to be doing fine, get hospitalized and are dead within a week or two. In the end, the movie was one of the pioneer movies to address the depressive and taboo subject of dying of cancer, something really only as recent as the late 60s and early 70s was able to be more open about. Though it is not a classic tearjerker, it is a sad and depressive movie about the real threat of carncer and I would recommend it to classic movie buffs and those wishing to study how Hollywood tackled death and dying in the films.

Not a bad movie

[msgene61 · 6/10 · 1 September 2008]

I thought it was a bit over the top when it came to melodrama. But I have to chuckle at those that review the old movies and talk about "sexism" and "racism." There is a cure for that - don't watch these movies.

The film was about a woman who, given 10 months to live from cancer, decides to get her affairs in order and wants to make sure that her child and husband are settled. Do not take the word of the goofy person who reviewed this and obviously didn't understand the film, but watch the film yourself.

Wendell Corey was wonderful as the husband. Yes, things definitely are different today (the doctor not wanting to tell the patient she is dying but the nurse picking up the phone to tell the husband is against HIPAA laws today) but this was not set in the present day.

A Must For Margaret Sullivan's Fans

[dcbottomcd · 8/10 · 7 August 2017]

As the review's title implies, this review focuses mostly on Margaret Sullivan's performance which I think deserves its own commentary. The subject has been covered before. It's not new. Bette Davis famously died in what some thought a noble and touching way in her 1939 film 'Dark Victory'. Offhand, I can think of hundreds of films that include the death of a lead character; obviously, this is not going to be a ground-breaking concept, right? Well, perhaps that isn't correct after all. For the theme of this 1950 film, Ms. Sullivan's last, is not anything so generic as 'dying gracefully'; nor is it dying 'shockingly', 'tragically', or in a circumstance that causes enormous complications for other characters that survive her death. In 'No Sad Songs for Me', Margaret Sullivan expires with a little of these plot components in place, but that isn't the point. What struck me about the film and especially Ms. Sullivan's performance is that she plays the part of a youngish- middle aged woman who discovers that she has a short time to live with characteristic "Margaret Sullivan" intelligence. There is also, strikingly, another emotion present throughout the film: 'melancholy'. No story was ever better suited to convey melancholic sensibilities, to be sure - but as performed by Ms. Sullivan, aided by a well-written script that avoids the excesses of 'Dark Victory' and other films, we never notice that the subject matter fits the mood in anything approaching a contrived way. Observe the multiple scenes that show Ms. Sullivan's character being rattled by the acting-out of various people that she encounters in the plot. She conveys a sense of concern, wonderment, insight, and empathy towards these friends and family members who are caught up in every- day dramas and not able to see the beauty and brevity of life as it has been made clear for her to see.

How heartbreaking is it that her adolescent daughter, played a bit abrasively by Natalie Wood is so unaware and uninterested in the curious spectacle of her mother stopping the family car along a route the two apparently take every day on the way to some school activity just to gaze at the trees and sky and marvel at the beauty of the day? Ms. Sullivan makes it clear that she is seeing the world in a different light, although she does not say why. Her daughter seems to miss the unsettling implications of this scene. Again, it doesn't matter - because Margaret Sullivan's performance transcends any and all obstacles as she creates a portrait of death with which we can't find fault. It is only after the film has ended that we realize that Sullivan has just illustrated all of the 'classic' stages of death although they are depicted realistically and not in any particular order. She isn't too noble. I relished the scene with a middle-aged male friend in a club near the home of Sullivan's on- screen father. The friend has lost his wife recently and has brought with him an abrasive, younger twit who insists on interjecting tedious commentaries and condescending observations, mostly aimed at the hapless friend who is dating the twit in the aftermath of his dissolved marriage. Sullivan is not limited to feeling "sorry" for this man. She registers, brilliantly and in a condensed format that a lesser actor would have trouble with, irritation and even a bit of exasperation with the character, before politely excusing herself from the duo's table. She spends the remainder of the scene casting sidelong glances at the pair, clearly torn between wanting to warn her old friend that he appears to be making a fool out of himself and wanting to avoid him at all costs in the future. After all, Miss Sullivan is dying and who has time to shelter this kind of juvenile workshop when one is on their way out on an express train? And yet, the empathetic side of Sullivan's views on this subject are every bit as present as the 'okay, I don't have time for this' portions are.

These examples work not because they stand out but because they blend in to the overall characterization rendered by Margaret Sullivan in this film. In fact these examples are merely those that I remember several months after viewing the film and with no 'cheat sheet'. Miss Sullivan always had a talent for bringing a special brand of 'prickly' behavior to her roles - a sort of edginess that warned us of her vulnerability and said, 'don't be too quick to judge this woman because she has her reasons and most of them make pretty good sense'. This is a different sort of energy than Bette Davis put out (since I've already brought up her performance in 'Dark Victory'): her edginess said, "watch out or you will fall in to agreement with this woman and her emotional truth may be accurate but its not always feasible".

The pervasive mood of 'No Sad Songs' is wistful, not hysterical. There are some fairly predictable plot twists made palatable by the key actors in the film, none of whom resort to the usual kind of stock "acting" that marks lesser works - As others have indicated, brace yourself a bit for the film's final moments unless you enjoy tears. The punch packed here is a force to be reckoned with. No Sad Songs For Me is a fittingly poignant film to end a poignant actress' screen career – because overall, the movie is touching, not mawkish and that is what Margaret Sullivan's career was all about.

A Trio of Fine Performances

[museumofdave · 7/10 · 4 June 2020]

Although it's sometimes difficult to do, judging a 1950's film with 2000's social mores and sense of letting it all hang out is probably not the best way to view this film, a sensitive and understated tale of a woman with cancer. Having lived through a time when the word was usually whispered rather than stated, and was usually not talked about in polite company, I know that Sullivan's horror at discovering not only that she cannot have a child but that she is also stricken with a killer illness is quietly realistic for the time (this is not a spoiler, such information revealed with the first ten minutes of the film). Sullivan delivers an amazing subtle performance, understated in her refusal to stage hysterical scenes of unhappiness, quietly demonstrating strength in attempting, as many people do, to not "become a burden." Underrated Wendell Corey, who is a powerful player in such melodramas as Harriet Craig and Desert Fury, is Sullivan's Mr. Average Guy, an amiable husband who loves his wife, kid, and work--and it is at work he meets a young woman who tempts him, a woman whose history reveals some hidden strengths. Enough said. Sure it's a weeper, supremely so as it gathers steam, but unlike a Crawford or Davis film, Sullivan's heroine is all about self-effacement and loving no matter what the cost, and thus appears to many contemporary viewers as a dated woman; the Oscar-nominated music score George Dunning (with plenty of help from Brahms) constantly underscores the film with a quiet persuasiveness; the supporting cast, including a delightfully thoughtful Natalie Wood deliver the goods.

Beautiful understated Sullavan

[Richardthepianist · 9/10 · 14 July 2019]

I have seen many films of this theme a la dying of incurable illness.. Bette Davis made her dynamic imprint with Dark Victory. Lana Turner moved beyond soap opera and made Madame X impossible to not weep in her demise.. Margaret Sullavan simplifies and shines in a glowing performance in this film.. With her incredibly unique speaking voice,her subtleties that are hers alone,this is an experience to marvel and weep over time and time again. An undervalued jewel!

Terminal illness, a la 1950

[Handlinghandel · 5/10 · 6 January 2008]

As a cancer survivor, I was a little uneasy about watching this. But it packs no punch at all. Maybe it did at the time: After all, until fairly recently, the word "cancer" was not uttered. It is here -- only once or twice and right at the film's beginning.

Margaret Sullavan is the sick person. She has a realistic, nice cozy looking house. She's married to Wendell Corey and their daughter is ten-year-old Natalie Wood. So maybe her passive approach makes some sense. She doesn't try to do anything different or differently, to make the most of her final months, though.

However, her not telling her husband means he is free to spend time with his new assistant Vivica Lindfors (who is excellent in her role.) I guess it's that 58 years have passed since this was made. Whatever the reason, I found it myself unmoved.

Mate's direction is sure and the musical score, from Beethoven and Wagner, is appropriate. Generally, though, I found it a disappointment.

"I don't melt in the rain" - but this is a meltdown

[clanciai · 10/10 · 5 November 2022]

The most interesting part of this singular film is the co-acting between Margaret Sullavan and Viveca Lindfors. They both love the same man, and Viveca is intent on leaving him not knowing that his wife Margaret is dying, while Margaret is intent on leaving her family to her after her death. They are rivals but very sympathetic and find each other, and Viveca also has a tragedy behind, having lost her husband in the war after too short a marriage, and somehow they find each other in their mutual fathomless sorrow and sadness.

The story is not remarkable. It's an ordinary melodrama in the style of Douglas Sirk, Margaret thinks she is crowning her family happiness by at last having another child, and hopefully a son, when the doctor tells her otherwise. She forces him to tell her the whole truth, which is that she only has six months left to live. She decides not to tell her husband (Wendell Corey), but although he gets mixed up with the lovely Viveca, who is employed as his assistant, he decides that Margaret and their daughter (Natalie Wood) mean more to him than Viveca, without knowing his wife is dying.

This is a rather ordinary sob story, but Margaret Sullavan turns it into something much more advanced by her heart-rending acting, which is totally sincere and almost unbearably convincing all the way. Your heart will bleed for her, and you will sob throughout the film, if you are human. Only she knows what she is up to, while the others just carry on, believing she is on as well, and her doctor plays a key role as he knows the whole truth and has to stand by her without any power to do anything. To all this comes the very prudent and delicate score by George During which gradually transcends into Brahms (1st symphony, last movement), which eventually gives the film something of an apotheosis of the kind that Frank Borage used to excel in, who made several of Margaret Sullavan's best films. She is forgotten today, but all her films stand out still, and she was actually married to Henry Fonda to begin with. This was her last film and in some ways both her most personal and typical.

The title must be a joke...this sick wifey wants nothing but sad songs

[moonspinner55 · 5/10 · 8 June 2010]

Well-heeled wife and mother in her forties, feeling run-down and believing she might be pregnant (!), learns from her doctor she only has ten months left to live; she keeps her secret from her husband and daughter, and doesn't interfere when her spouse gets eyes for another lady. Adapted from Ruth Southard's novel by Howard Koch, this is an infuriating undergraduate of the "Dark Victory" school of script-writing. Solely for the sake of melodrama, Margaret Sullavan's harried housewife begs her doctor to tell her the truth, but doesn't extend the same courtesy to her own husband (Wendell Corey, who instead asks over and over if she's all right, all the while with a pained expression on his face). Strictly a 'woman's picture' of the time, with a magazine serial-styled plot. Some of the dialogue confounds one with its absurdity, and Sullavan is far too efficient and business-like for a one-woman pity party. Natalie Wood skips through the movie in old-fashioned print dresses and braids, but Viveca Lindfors gets the worst of it in the obtuse role of a war-widow who begins to feel like a woman again when she's out with a married man. ** from ****

Title belies some hand-wringing, but Sullavan and company keep it afloat.

[Poseidon-3 · 11 January 2008]

Cancer was still something to be whispered about in 1950 (and, of course, it was less prevalent then than it's become in the meantime) and the rather melodramatic way in which it's uttered here can be quite a surprise to modern viewers. Thankfully, some sensitive acting and pretty well modulated direction help keep this film from getting too far out of hand, though it does get a tad sticky, despite the title. Sullavan plays a housewife, devoted to her engineer husband Corey and their precocious daughter Wood, who goes in to see her doctor (McIntire) about a potential pregnancy, but, instead, is told that she has an advanced case of cancer. Determining that she has about 10 months to live, only 6 of them fully on her feet, she decides to keep this from her family and attempt to live as normal a life as possible. Looking more wan with each passing weak (not something ascertained by the black and white photography, but indicated by Sullavan's continual application of blush and the pinching of her cheeks to add color!), she frets about the fate of her family after she's gone. As it turns out, things may not be too horrible for them after all since Corey has hired a lovely Swedish "draftsman" in the form of Lindfors who he works with in close proximity and for long hours. It isn't long before Corey is placing Lindfors in the sites of his surveying scope and he doesn't even know that Sullavan is sick! The town hens begin to pick up on it, though, and when they warn Sullavan, she thinks about how to turn lemons into lemonade. Sullavan, in her last big screen role, is sincere and strong in a part that could easily have veered into camp. Looking a bit like June Allyson in certain shots, she elicits viewer compassion even though the bulk of the trouble she takes on, apart from the disease, is her own fault! It's quite preposterous that a woman could deteriorate and die from cancer with no one in her presence aware that she's ill, but Sullavan pulls it off as well as anyone could. Corey is appealing and multi-dimensional. His affection for Sullavan and his attraction for Lindfors are palpable. Lindfors does an admirable job, not allowing herself to be painted just one color either. A very gangly Wood is uncharacteristically grating here, overacting in some moments and coming off as a pest in others. McIntire's role makes little sense. One minute he's trying to inform Corey of Sullavan's illness without informing HER and then he's content to let Corey go uninformed until the 11th hour! He also gives her nearly a year to live, but with no procedures or treatment aside from painkillers. If this is a glimpse into the ethics and integrity of doctors in the 1950's, we have certainly come a long way since. His real life wife Nolan plays the same in the film. The premise is far-fetched to be sure (and has been done, variously, many times in movies and on TV), but somehow the cast and director make it work to a great extent. Look out for the New Years Eve party that contains more streamers than can be imagined! Sullavan, an actress who frequently died on screen and who portrayed attempted suicide victims a couple of times (including here) actually took her own life with an overdose about a decade after this film was released when depression and a congenital defect took away her hearing.

Rekindling the flame .

[ulicknormanowen · 8/10 · 2 January 2023]

Recalling Frank Borzage's movies in which Margaret Sullavan was often cast as the unfortunate heroine ("three comrades" "moral storm" ,classics all); it was her final film.

Not unlike "dark victory " in which Bette Davis was the last to know about her terminally-ill condition (memorable scene of the menu) ,from the beginning the doctor reveals her patient that she only has a few months to live ,but she insists her husband be unaware of her condition;hence the doctor's beautiful lines to Wendell Corey :" she has been playing her role for five months ,now,it's up to you" .

The movie is a hymn to the family and the gypsy's predictions are ,in their way ,quite true . There are no sad songs ,no self-pity, no words about the awful truth ,but sometimes a sentence almost gives her away (she cannot complete a sentence after the word "before") and some lines remind her of her condition (the policeman: "you have to read the road signs if you want to live long".)Let's also mention the New Year 's celebration , when Sullavan watches the clock just before it strikes twelve ,and her last year ....

The ending is treated with a great modesty: a close shot of a black phone, then Viveca Lindfords listens to the call , returns to the piano where she joins the little girl (Nathalie Wood) to play a tune ; Polly has this admirable word "smile" .

The studio should have pronounced this one D. O. A.

[herbqedi · 2/10 · 23 June 2004]

Margaret Sullivan, in a rare leading role, gets to sing her career swan song in an unfortunately lifeless sudser. She plays a middle-class housewife dying of an incurable disease.

The movie starts out as an interesting portrait of her wish to face this death with dignity. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is as maudlin as anything Hollywood has ever delivered -- and that's quite a statement. Some excellent character actors get to play well-meaning but ultimately self-absorbed guest stars in her life's terminal phase. Then, at the end, it further degenerates to completely unsatisfactory moralizing tone, wrapping up loose ends.

Roughly around this time, Mate, the movie's director, directed the classic film noir, D. O. A., where star Edmond O'Brien plays a man dying of interminable disease. I wish I could be more pleasant about Sullivan's overwrought valedictory performance, but in truth, it should have been buried in the film's can as D.O. A.

Soap opera waste of time

[ddave1952-609-939427 · 3/10 · 14 July 2014]

I do like sad movies, ones that tugs at your heartstrings, I do love the movie Somewhere in Time by the way. However this movie is the most frustrating movie I have watched in a long time. What I don't like about this so-called tearjerker is that the wife, played by Margaret Sullivan, never tells her husband she is dying. He only finds it out at the very end of the movie by error when he sees a pill bottle on the bedroom table and calls up the doctor who tells him. Even the doctor doesn't tell him. She thinks she's saving him grief by not telling him, but to me she's just selfish. This was six months after she knew she had cancer. The first half an hour was okay, but when her husband is having an affair with his co-worker, even then she tells no one. Nothing in this movie seemed genuine. They even played a melody from a Brahm's symphony which I love, over and over to the point where I couldn't stand to listen to it any more. The acting was artificial from everyone. If you like soap operas this might be enjoyable, but for people who like sad movies every once in a while, this was disappointing and a waste of my time. Margaret Sullivan's last movie was not her best

Margaret Sullavan's last film ... and she didn't go out on a high.

[MOscarbradley · 3/10 · 25 August 2020]

Margaret Sullavan's last film and she didn't go out on a high. "No Sad Songs for Me" is a weepie and not a very good one. Margaret has only ten months to live, (she has cancer), but being the stoic, self-sacrificing type all she worries about is her husband, (Wendell Corey, very good considering the material), and her daughter, (Natalie Wood, obnoxious in pigtails). Rudolph Mate was the director and I suppose he did his best under the circumstances while Viveca Lindfors is 'the other woman' Margaret would be happy her husband settles down with after she's gone. Mercifully, her ten months fairly fly by and the movie manages to clock in at under ninety minutes.

More like a Fairytale

[projekchick1 · 10 January 2008]

Saw this movie yesterday on TCM. Was flipping channels and it looked interesting. Not the type of movie that would be made today,I guess.More of a fairytale. It seems like if a person were that sick they would need more than painkillers and rest.

Even in "Love Story" Jenny's husband and father knew.I don't understand why she didn't tell someone. And she died right on time like there was an alarm clock or something.Ding! your time is up.You can be given six months and last six years.

Also, even though I've seen "Miracle on 34th St" many times I had no idea that was Natalie Wood.