Beyond Tomorrow [DVD]

This is a little-known black and white movie that is, in many ways, a treasure. The story begins on Christmas Eve in a large city (NYC, I believe), with three elderly gentlemen business partners who prepare to spend Christmas Eve together. Alas...at the last minute the invited guests cancel. The three elderly men make a bet -- they take three gift wallets, placing a business card and $10 in each of them, and they toss the wallets out onto the street...just to see if anyone will return the wallet.

Needless to say, from this humble beginning two kind souls return the wallets, friendships are built, and even romance ensues.

The part I think is most interesting about the movie though, is that the story really does go "Beyond Tomorrow," following the elderly gentlemen and their opinions, interests, and concerns for their new friends, even beyond the grave -- in an uplifting way.

This is an extremely enjoyable movie. I encourage you to give it a look, especially if you are tired of watching the same line-up of Christmas specials and movies.

Top-notch holiday entertainment, though not quite in the same class as "It's a Wonderful Life" or "A Miracle on 34th Street"...both better known 5-star offerings.

Merry Christmas!

Alan Holyoak

With spring, a young man's fancy turns to love - and so I sought out a romance to watch. Of course, being me, I chose a nontraditional sort of romance, one involving ghostly matchmakers. Since my own love life (or lack thereof) would seem to require some sort of supernatural intervention itself, Beyond Tomorrow seemed like a perfect choice. This 1940 classic is actually a Christmas movie, truth be told, but there's no harm in watching it whenever you like. After all, a failure to keep Christmas in your heart throughout the entire year leaves you vulnerable to nocturnal visits from the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

Beyond Tomorrow tells a simple but touching story. It all starts with three older gentlemen who share the same house and work together running an engineering firm. Chad (C. Aubrey Smith) and Michael (Charles Winninger) are all business, working late on Christmas Eve, while George (Harry Carey) enjoys Christmas as a jolly Irishman should. When he learns that his invited guests are unable to join him and his friends for Christmas Eve dinner, George forestalls the two old fogeys' idea of heading out to the club by inviting two strangers for dinner. Each of the men sticks ten dollars and his card in a new wallet, pitches it out onto the snowy sidewalk, and waits to see if fate (and an honest heart or two) will bring any good deed doers to their door. Two out of three ain't bad, as a young Texan (Richard Carlson) and a charming young teacher (Jean Parker) end up joining them for dinner. The two young folks quickly fall in love, spending many a happy hour in the company of their three unassuming benefactors over the following few weeks. Even as they make plans for a lifetime together, however, they lose their three good friends in an airplane crash. And so it is that Chad, Michael, and George return home in ghostly form. And it's a good thing they do, as the young lovers soon face some rocky times, as new-found success as a singer and the attentions of another fashionable young lady turn the young Texan's head.

I'm a little surprised this film isn't more widely known, as it really does tell a wonderful story. The love story itself actually pales in comparison to the lives (and deaths) of the three older gentlemen. George's two friends gradually lose their crusty edges by the time their personal calls from heaven come, but it is the warm-hearted George (who, even as a ghost, cares more about the young lovers' happiness than his own eternal rest) that really steals the show and makes this such a should-be Christmas classic. A powerful performance by the wonderful Maria Ouspenskaya adds further emotion to a truly heart-warming story.

In this elaborately scripted fantasy, when three aging businessmen are unexpectedly left without guests on Christmas Eve, each tosses a wallet including a ten dollar bill from a window in hopes that someone honest will return one, and be asked to dinner, to make their holiday less lonely. Two of the three billfolds are returned, by a young man (Richard Carlson) and a young woman (Jean Parker) whose lives are acutely changed as they are welcomed not only to the table of the three gentlemen but also into their hearts and those of their two retainers (Maria Ouspenskaya and Alex Melesh). The young pair quite appropriately fall in love, only to have their beatitude marred when their sage benefactors die in a plane crash, but when the three promptly return to their town manse as apparitions, a bittersweet tale unfolds when Jimmy, the young man, falls prey to a siren (Helen Vinson) and the trio (C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Winninger, Harry Carey) in their belief that they will not be received in Heaven until they assist the lad in untangling himself from the vixen, set out to do so. After two of the spirits wend their way to Elysium, the last (Winninger) decides to remain within the shadow of Earth, swooping about while attempting to assist his young former charges with their romantic travails. All boils down to an eminently satisfactory ending, with fine work by those involved, including splendid editing by Otto Ludwig and top-drawer art direction by Stephen Goosson, while cast member Ouspenskaya, as a noble émigré from Russia, is especially effective in this amiable film.