My Girl Tisa

It's 1905 in New York City. Lili Palmer is a poor emigrant living at blowzy Stella Adler's rooming house. Also there is Sam Wanamaker (in his first screen role), a man who holds down five jobs when he's not quitting because they say something bad about President Roosevelt. He dreams big: become an alderman, become a lwyer, then senator and advisor to the president. Unfortunately his energy, ideas and bumptiousness get in his own way.

It's a lovely fairy tale , full of fine character actors like Akim Tamiroff, Alan Hale, Hugo Haas, John Qualen..... the list goes on and on, set ina little street where everyone gets along, more or less, proving that it is a fairy tale. Miss Palmer is pert and adorable, Wanamaker gives a performance that is full of the American Melting Pot myth, and the ending includes the sort of deus-ex-machina ending that all such fairy tales deserve.

Some movies are overlooked because the subject matter just did not strike the right note with the public when they were released. MY GIRL TISA is one such film. It came out in 1948, and was one of Lili Palmer's first American films (she'd been in English films for over a decade - since Hitchcock's THE SECRET AGENT in 1935 at least). She dismissed it in her autobiography, CHANGE LOBSTERS AND DANCE (she remembered that she had a heart-to-heart talk with the Statue of Liberty, which is true enough). In 1948 the country had just gotten through our second bloodiest war, and wanted to get back to normal. It was suspicious of foreigners (the McCarthy period was about to begin). It was not the right time to make a film celebrating the great immigration wave from Europe in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. And MY GIRL TISA was not a financial success.

Which is a pity because MY GIRL TISA, despite a weakened script, is the closest thing to the definitive American immigrant film. It's closest rivals are Chaplin's Mutual film, THE IMMIGRANT, and I REMEMBER MAMA (the latter actually concentrating on a Norwegian-American family in San Francisco, so it goes into a look at the relations of the family members, especially the mother (Irene Dunne) and her oldest daughter). Other films (YENTL, for instance) touch on immigration too, but only tangentially. TISA dealt with the whole gamut of New York, lower East Side society - the boarding houses, the difficulties of finding work (in sweatshops, or in beginning a legal career), the way the political hacks manipulate the immigrant blocks (Alan Hale Sr. and his friendly community picnic),the nervousness of preparing (like Tamiroff does) for the naturalization test, the barely legal business scams of "friendly" bankers like Hugo Haas. And the ever-present threat of deportation. All of these are brought out in this film, and were never dealt with in such detail.

Aside from Palmer (who was a fine actress, but never got the stardom she may have deserved), the other actors in the film are highly capable, but none was a star. Sam Wanamaker is best remembered today not for acting in this film or any Hollywood (or English) film, but for his work in getting the Globe theatre rebuilt in London. Akim Tamiroff, Alan Hale Sr., Hugo Haas, John Qualen, Sidney Blackmer, and Stella Adler were all excellent character actors, but their characters are all peripheral to the story of Tisa and her boyfriend. The result was that all the actors have moments to shine in the film, but they can't dominate it (as several of them did on other films - like Tamiroff in THE MAGNIFICENT FRAUD). This does not mean that the scenes with Palmer and Wanamaker are too weak. They hold the film together well. It is just that as neither is a superstar the film can't get an audience interested enough to watch it.

It also is one of the few films which deals with that most fascinating of American Presidents - Theodore Roosevelt (Blackmer). Although TR has popped up in other films (John Alexander played him well in FANCY PANTS, and played his doppelganger "Teddy" Brewster in ARSENIC AND OLD LACE), and Brian Keith played him in THE WIND AND THE LION), he has not appeared in any one film of the stature of WILSON, SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, or PT 109. Blackmer only appears at the tail end, as a modern variant to a "deus ex machina". He is forced by Wanamaker to hear of Palmer's plight when she is being deported due to the lies Haas has vindictively spread about her. So he hears Palmer talking to the Statue of Liberty of the state of unhappiness she feels at facing this unfair depression (the Statue, by the way, is in the distance from her window in the detention center). Roosevelt does get her out of it, and even asks Wanamaker's advice (their riding together in a carriage with Tisa forces Alan Hale to change his mind about ignoring Wanamaker as a political candidate). Perhaps it is too quick and pat an ending, but it is a nice way of ending what is a comedy after all.

Lilli Palmer stars as Tisa Kepes, a Hungarian immigrant to New York City in 1905, working at four jobs to save enough money to pay for her father's passage to the United States, including one at a tie-manufacturing sweat shop owned by Mr. Brumbach (Akim Tamiroff), who is giddy at the prospect of passing his citizenship examination with the tutoring of Mark Denek (Sam Wanamaker). After a successful stage career, this is the first screen appearance for Wanamaker, considered by Warner Brothers as a successor to John Garfield in their long progression of proletarian films, and he gives a strong performance as an ambitious novice politician in Gotham's notorious fourth ward, led here by assemblyman Dugan (Alan Hale). Many of the main characters reside in a boarding house run by Mrs. Faludi (Stella Adler, in a rare appearance) and inevitably Mark and Tisa fall in love with Tisa deciding to use part of her savings to finance quixotic Mark's notion that he will become a successful attorney by completing a mail order course, thereby jeopardizing her ability to reunite with her father. This is a sweet natured work, directed ably by Elliott Nugent, but is somewhat hampered by a weak script, its dialogue in particular failing to enhance an ambitious series of subplots with which Nugent must deal, although scenes involving the growing mutual attraction of the lovers are, on the evidence, an indication of what might have been a far more effective production. Filmed in black and white, TISA depicts, on no small budget, a realistic depiction of the first decade of the twentieth century as experienced by a wide range of idealistic European emigrants, and is replete with that optimism which one might expect from new residents to America.

Is this a comedy, a social drama, a documentary or some kind of a historical nostalgia? It all happens in 1905 when Theodore Roosevelt is president of America and New York is being crowded by immigrants of all nations from Europe. Practically all the players are immigrants themselves or of that origin. Lilli Palmer is the central figure, a seamstress working for Akim Tamiroff, Mr Grumbach, the central comedian of the drama, trying desperately to become an American citizen, in which hopeless effort he is aided by the noisy adventurer Sam Wanamaker, an American citizen of the aggressive type of a pusher, who thinks he could accomplish anything and even become an adviser to the president. All three act their parts with overwhelming brilliance, but Lilli Palmer will steal your heart: "any lady will start crying for just anything". She indeed has reasons to cry as she is threatened with deportation because of a deceit she has suffered because of the Romanian cheat Hugo Haas, who reports her after having failed to seduce her - here is the drama of the story, which could turn out into a tragedy, but a Crown Prince is arriving from Europe with the same ship as her father, we never learn who the crown prince is and we never see her father, but as things turn out, the unexpected end is just a glorious sunrise by the entrance of another unexpected person. It's a glorious film, and it gives a wonderful insight into the plight of the immigrants to America at the turn of the last century.

MY GIRL TISA gave American audiences their first real glimpse of the charms of LILLI PALMER who had been making waves in Great Britain in a number of films for a decade previously. Here she has the starring role as a Hungarian immigrant dealing with the plight of survival in New York's lower East side, swarming with tenement apartments, sweatshops and all the rascals needed to keep the plot spinning.

SAM WANAMAKER was a pleasant choice for a co-star and Warner surrounded them with a nice supporting cast headed by AKIM TAMIROFF (studying hard for his naturalization test), HUGO HAAS, STELLA ADLER and ALAN HALE and gave the production some nice pictorial touches with regard to costumes and music for the early 20th century flavor.

But the story is a slight one, never amounting to much, although it does deal with the immigration of European immigrants in a detailed way not usually explored in films from this era.

Summing up: Passes the time pleasantly and provides a star-making role for LILLI PALMER.