(John Sturges, US 1950, 89 min., 16mm)
Louis Calhern is likely best remembered as Cary Grant’s nasty boss in Notorious, or the money behind the heist in The Asphalt Jungle, but he was also a company player in the Cukor-Kondolf troupe in Rochester in the 1920s, and received his only Academy Award nomination for his role in this biographical drama. Boston jurist and Civil War vet Oliver Wendell Holmes is appointed to the Supreme Court in 1902, bringing along his wife, although the couple is still saddened by their inability to have children. Known as “The Great Dissenter” over his thirty years on the court, Holmes “fights like hell” over the fourteenth amendment, anti-trust laws, labor unions, and freedom of speech, all the while employing the top graduate of every year at Harvard Law, whom he comes to treat as if they were his own sons. This affecting drama, based on the play by Emmett Lavery, finally gave Calhern his hour to shine.