1940 – William Gargan
They Knew What They Wanted
This movie surprised me in several ways. First, the story was much more dramatic than I was expecting. Second, Charles Laughton turned in a really wonderful performance, and third, William Gargan played a complete jerk so perfectly. I’ll say right off the bat that he deserved his Oscar nomination. The role was not an easy one to play, and I thought he did a fine job.
He played the part of Joe. There were times when I thought he was the main character of the story, but at the end, I came to understand that he was put into the correct category. Joe was a self-proclaimed drifter who cared only for himself. He was a lady’s man who did what he wanted when he wanted and never thought about the consequences. But when he gets his best friend Tony’s bride-to-be pregnant, he has a moment of responsibility where he asks the girl to marry him instead. She blames him for bringing out the worst in her, as she has actually fallen in love with her fiancée. She slaps Joe hard and refuses him, and he seems more relieved than anything else. Still the shock on his face was well-played.
Then when Tony learns the truth, he beats the crap out of him, and he is so ashamed, he just stands there and takes it. Then he runs away into the night, and that’s the last time we see him. Joe’s emotions were complex and fluid, and Gargan did a pretty good job moving through them quickly and without much transition. And the drama got pretty deep. Yes, Laughton and Lombard were seasoned actors and clearly knew what they were doing, but Gargan, though less well-known than his costars, also had a long list of acting credits behind him, and ahead of him, for that matter.
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting in this movie, but I was quite pleasantly surprised, and Gargan was a big part of that. I guess he was really the bad guy of the movie, though not really. He was a victim of lust, a vice that many people have. And Gargan had just the right look for the part. He was handsome, but not too handsome, smarmy, but oddly charming at the same time. He had a devil-may-care attitude, but underneath, he hid a kind heart. He was neither fully bad nor fully good. He was just irresponsible. And Gargan brought all this out through his attention to those emotional complexities that the role required. Well done!