Majolica in the Movies: Of Human Hearts

Poster for the 1938 MGM film Of Human Hearts

You never know where majolica is going to show up, even if it technically shouldn't be there. The film Of Human Hearts is a 1938 movie directed by Clarence Brown from MGM starring Walter Huston, James Stewart and Beulah Bondi. It tells the story of a poor minister and his family set in Antebellum rural Ohio before and during the Civil War.

It follows a minister played by Walter Huston and concentrates on the ungrateful son he raises played first as a child by Gene Reynolds and in his later years by James Stewart. This movie dates from the period just before Stewart emerged as a major star in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939. The story begins around 1850 and runs through the mid 1860s. The majolica appears in the home of the minister in the early part of the story–a majolica oak leaf tray sitting on the family sideboard.

Scene from Of Human Hearts with actor Guy Kibbee playing a local merchant

Adams & Bromley majolica oak leaf tray

The reason I say that the majolica shouldn't technically be there is because it wouldn't have been made until at least 10 years after the period in which the scene is set. Perhaps the set director was ignorant or just lazy in placing it there. Since it was an MGM movie, it is most likely one of the same oak trays that appeared in On Borrowed Time the following year and later appeared in the studio’s 1943 technicolor movie "Lassie Come Home."

Scenes from On Borrowed Time

Scene from Lassie Come Home with Donald Crisp and Elsa Lanchester

It's very common to see the same sets, costumes and props in numerous movies as they were repeatedly drawn from the same studio warehouses. I make a game of actually looking for these kinds of things in old movies. There is a majolica clock in the film Gigi that has appeared in more MGM movies than I can count. There are even Web sites devoted to these kinds of things, like Recycled Movie Costumes.

Nonetheless, Of Human Hearts is a historical movie with some Civil War action sequences and something of a message picture, a bit unusual, but one worth your time if that is your cup of tea.

As an aside, John Carradine plays Abe Lincoln in the movie in terrible makeup, even for the time. My question is, why is Lincoln always played with a Northern accent when he grew up in the South?  Anyway, he gives Stewart as the ungrateful son, a tongue lashing one doesn’t often see portrayed in movies of the 16th President. Certainly a different take on Honest Abe.

For a clip from the movie go here.