{"id":18804,"date":"2026-07-21T20:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18804"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:49:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:49:22","slug":"my-son-john-1952-leo-mccarey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18804","title":{"rendered":"My Son John (1952, Leo McCarey)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annoyingly square 1950s movie with a worm of weirdness in the middle. Mostly it’s clumsily-made propaganda, but the dialogue pops at times, and EGOT Helen Hayes is very good, bringing real personality to a bland mother role. Movie feels like a play, with long takes (ruined with weird edits via optical zoom), the family naturalistically stuttering over their lines. You wouldn’t think it’s the work of a 30-year veteran director, but at least it’s lovably eccentric – you also wouldn’t guess this all-talk bible-vs-communism story would end in a car chase and shootout.<\/p>\n

Dad vs. Red John:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Mom listens in:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Mom has nothing to talk about except when her kids were little, which seems familiar. John (Robert Walker, department store worker in One Touch of Venus<\/a><\/em>) is doing important work in Washington while the other two songs (one from a John Carpenter movie, the other from a movie John Carpenter remade) head off to war. Dad (sheriff of Forty Guns<\/a><\/em>) is exasperating, decides John is a commie then whacks him with a bible and pushes him over a table. Nobody in this movie can take a joke – that’s the root of the problem.<\/p>\n

John really is a commie though, and FBI agent Van Heflin (a major player on the cowboy scene in 3:10 to Yuma<\/a><\/em>) is hanging around the house, dancing around what exact degree of treason the kid is being charged with. After John doesn’t survive the car chase, movie peters out with his pre-taped speech warning the youth about soviet infiltration.<\/p>\n

Mom vs. the FBI:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Cowboy Dan reviews the rushes:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

My second<\/a> movie in consecutive weeks where someone calls a person “whozis.” Will Sloan<\/a>: “Contains some nice Game of Death<\/a><\/em>-style trickery to conceal the fact that the titular Son John died during production.” Rosenbaum: “At once profound about the dynamics of family discord involving cultural differences and deranged about the Communist menace.” Kehr: “An appalling masterpiece. Resist the temptation to laugh at the film’s violent anticommunism and try to see it as the audiences of 1952 did, and you’ll experience the most wrenching right-wing film ever made.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annoyingly square 1950s movie with a worm of weirdness in the middle. Mostly it’s clumsily-made propaganda, but the dialogue pops at times, and EGOT Helen Hayes is very good, bringing real personality to a bland mother role. Movie feels like a play, with long takes (ruined with weird edits via optical zoom), the family naturalistically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[342,336,3506,487],"class_list":["post-18804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1950s","tag-communism","tag-helen-hayes","tag-leo-mccarey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18832,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18804\/revisions\/18832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}