Tired Old Queen at the Movies: 'The Rains Came' (1939)

This week Steve Hayes reviews "The Rains Came." Steve says: In 1939, every studio in Hollywood was in a panic over how to compete with "Gone With the Wind." Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox, bought Louis Bromfield's "The Rains Came," a sprawling novel of forbidden and interracial love set in India. With an all-star cast headed by romantic idol Tyrone Power, the blockbuster became the most expensive film Fox had produced. Power plays a young, dedicated Indian doctor who risks everything in an illicit love affair with a married English woman of questionable reputation, played by Myrna Loy. Zanuck borrowed her from MGM and decided to cast her against type as the wanton Lady Esketh. For the philandering and drunken ex-patriot Tom Ransome, he borrowed George Brent from Warner Brothers and very much wanted the young and sexy Lana Turner to play the promiscuous Fern Simon. However, MGM studio head, Louis B. Meyer wasn't about to loan out two of his moneymakers, so Zanuck handed the plum role to newcomer Brenda Joyce. Gorgeously shot at the studio, in shimmering black and white by ace cinematographer Arthur Miller, "The Rains Came" is a good old romantic, melodramatic, Hollywood spectacle that simply can't be beat!