Next Time We Love is a
melodramaThe theatrical genre of melodrama uses theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" and "drama" . While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in most cases it is used within a fairly rigid structure...
film directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring
Margaret SullavanMargaret Brooke Sullavan . Margaret Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. She was especially known for her effortless acting and her distinctive throaty voice. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M...
,
James StewartJames Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was an American film and stage actor, best known for his self-effacing persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
and
Ray MillandRay Milland was a Welsh-American actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best-remembered for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend ....
. It was written by
Melville Baker'Melville Baker was an American screenwriter. Among his works are The Circus Kid , One Romantic Night , His Woman , Zoo in Budapest , The Gilded Lily , Ladies in Love and Above Suspicion .Born in Massachusetts, Baker died of a heart attack in Nice, France at the age of 56 years....
with
Preston SturgesPreston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated screenwriter and film director born in Chicago....
and
Doris AndersonDoris Hilda Anderson, CC was a Canadian author, journalist and women's rights activist.She was born in Calgary, Alberta as Hilda Doris Buck. She attended Crescent Heights High School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1945...
, who were both uncredited, based on Ursula Parrott's 1935 novel
Next Time We Live, which was serialized before publication as
Say Goodbye Again. The film is also known as
Next Time We Live in the
U.K.The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
Aspiring actress Cicely Tyler (
Margaret SullavanMargaret Brooke Sullavan . Margaret Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. She was especially known for her effortless acting and her distinctive throaty voice. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M...
) marries ambitious newsman Christopher Tyler (
James StewartJames Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was an American film and stage actor, best known for his self-effacing persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
) but their life together is interrupted when he is assigned to a good position in his newspaper's Rome bureau, and she stays behind, confiding to her rich secret admirer, Tommy Abbott (
Ray MillandRay Milland was a Welsh-American actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best-remembered for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend ....
), that she is pregnant.
Next Time We Love is a
melodramaThe theatrical genre of melodrama uses theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" and "drama" . While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in most cases it is used within a fairly rigid structure...
film directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring
Margaret SullavanMargaret Brooke Sullavan . Margaret Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. She was especially known for her effortless acting and her distinctive throaty voice. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M...
,
James StewartJames Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was an American film and stage actor, best known for his self-effacing persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
and
Ray MillandRay Milland was a Welsh-American actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best-remembered for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend ....
. It was written by
Melville Baker'Melville Baker was an American screenwriter. Among his works are The Circus Kid , One Romantic Night , His Woman , Zoo in Budapest , The Gilded Lily , Ladies in Love and Above Suspicion .Born in Massachusetts, Baker died of a heart attack in Nice, France at the age of 56 years....
with
Preston SturgesPreston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated screenwriter and film director born in Chicago....
and
Doris AndersonDoris Hilda Anderson, CC was a Canadian author, journalist and women's rights activist.She was born in Calgary, Alberta as Hilda Doris Buck. She attended Crescent Heights High School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1945...
, who were both uncredited, based on Ursula Parrott's 1935 novel
Next Time We Live, which was serialized before publication as
Say Goodbye Again. The film is also known as
Next Time We Live in the
U.K.The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
Plot
Aspiring actress Cicely Tyler (
Margaret SullavanMargaret Brooke Sullavan . Margaret Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. She was especially known for her effortless acting and her distinctive throaty voice. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M...
) marries ambitious newsman Christopher Tyler (
James StewartJames Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was an American film and stage actor, best known for his self-effacing persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
) but their life together is interrupted when he is assigned to a good position in his newspaper's Rome bureau, and she stays behind, confiding to her rich secret admirer, Tommy Abbott (
Ray MillandRay Milland was a Welsh-American actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best-remembered for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend ....
), that she is pregnant. Separations, reunions and reconciliations follow as Cicely and Christopher struggle to balance their romance and their careers.
Cast
- Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Brooke Sullavan . Margaret Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. She was especially known for her effortless acting and her distinctive throaty voice. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M...
as Cicely Tyler
- James Stewart
James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was an American film and stage actor, best known for his self-effacing persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
as Christopher Tyler
- Ray Milland
Ray Milland was a Welsh-American actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best-remembered for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend ....
as Tommy Abbott
- Grant Mitchell
John Grant Mitchell, Jr. was an American stage actor on Broadway and character actor in B films of the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared on Broadway from 1902 to 1939 and appeared in more than 125 films between 1930 and 1948....
as Michael Jennings
- Anna Demetrio as Madame Donato
- Robert McWade
Robert McWade , was an American film actor. He appeared in 83 films between 1924 and 1938, for example "42nd Street" with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler ....
as Frank Carteret
- Ronnie Cosby as Kit at Age Eight
Cast notes:
- Arthur Aylesworth
Arthur Aylesworth was an American actor who was a part of the Warner Brothers studio of film actors.Aylesworth was born in Apponaug, Rhode Island and starred on Broadway in the musical Follow Thru...
, Leonid KinskeyLeonid Kinskey was a Russian-born movie and television actor who enjoyed a long career.Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He fled the Russian Revolution and acted on stage in Europe and South America before arriving in New York City in 1921...
and Hattie McDanielHattie McDaniel was an American actress and the first black performer to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind ....
, among others, have uncredited appearances in Next Time We Love.
Production
Ursula Parrott was a popular novelist of the time, several of whose novels were turned into films, most prominently
Ex-Wife which became the movie
The DivorceeThe Divorcee is a 1930 American drama film written by Nick Grindé, John Meehan and Zelda Sears, and based on the novel Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott. It was directed by Robert Z. Leonard, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director....
. The story which provided the source material for
Next Time We Love was first serialized as
Say Goodbye Again in
McCall'sMcCall's was a monthly American women's magazine that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of six million in 1960. It was established as a small-format magazine called The Queen in 1873. In 1897, it was renamed McCall's Magazine and subsequently grew...
from December 1934 to April 1935, and was then published as a novel called
Next Time We Live, which was also the working title of the film. There was debate about what to call the movie, with studio executives worrying that "Next Time We Live" might be misinterpreted to be about reincarnation, while director Edward H. Griffith didn't want to lose the publicity value of using the title of the novel. Although the film was released as
Next Time We Love, the alternate title
Next Time We Live was used for its release in the U.K.
Francis LedererFrancis Lederer was an American film and stage actor.-Europe:Lederer fell in love with acting when he was young, and was trained at the Academy of Music and Academy of Dramatic Art in Prague. After service in the First World War, he made his stage debut as an apprentice with the New German...
was originally cast for the part of "Christopher Tyler", but was unavailable. Margaret Sullavan was responsible for getting her friend Jimmy Stewart borrowed from MGM for the part. Production on the film was delayed because Sullavan was shooting retakes for
So Red The RoseSo Red The Rose is the platinum-selling album by the Duran Duran-spinoff group Arcadia, which was released in 1985 — the only album the band ever released...
, but it began on 21 October and continued through 30 December. Shooting began with only half the script written by
Melville Baker'Melville Baker was an American screenwriter. Among his works are The Circus Kid , One Romantic Night , His Woman , Zoo in Budapest , The Gilded Lily , Ladies in Love and Above Suspicion .Born in Massachusetts, Baker died of a heart attack in Nice, France at the age of 56 years....
, so three weeks into production, the studio put
Doris AndersonDoris Hilda Anderson, CC was a Canadian author, journalist and women's rights activist.She was born in Calgary, Alberta as Hilda Doris Buck. She attended Crescent Heights High School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1945...
on the project as well. Some scenes in the film were directed in San Francisco by assistant director Ralph Slosser using doubles, and Slosser also directed some studio scenes as well.
Next Time We Love was released at the end of January 1936.