Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

32. Till I Come Back to You

32 Till I Come Back to You An Artcraft Picture. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario: jeanie Macpherson. Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff and Charles Rosher. Film editor: Anne Bauchens Picture started: june 25, 1918. Picture finished: july 22, 1918. Length: 6,499 feet (seven reels). Cost: $52,646.56. Released: September I, 1918. Gross: $183,834.23 Cast: Bryant Washburn (Capt. jefferson Strong, USA), Florence Vidor (Yvonne von Krutz), G. Butler Clonbough [Gustav von Seyffertitz] (Karl von Krutz), Winter Hall (King Albert ofBelgium), Clarence Geldart (US colonel), George E. Stone Uacques), julia Faye (Susette), Lillian Leighton (Margot), Frank Butterworth (German boy), May Giraci (Rosa), C. Rohfeld (her father), W.j. Irving (Stroheim), Monte Blue (an American doughboy), Guy Oliver, Wallace Beery, Clarence Burton, and Tully Marshall Till I Come Back to You is a blatant piece of wartime propaganda full 1 of stiff-upper-lip heroics and totally improbable situations designed to buoy up spirits on the home front. Jeanie Macpherson's perverse sense of drama is again in evidence. Yvonne, the Belgian heroine played by Florence Vidor, is married to a hateful Hun. While von Krutz is at the front, King Albert of Belgium stops near the von Krutz home and sees Yvonne's young brother, Jacques, playing soldier. The kindly king gives the boyan ivy cutting to symbolize the Belgian motto-"I die where I c1ing"-and asks the boy to protect Belgium "Till I Come Back to You." As the German army advances, von Krutz returns home and finds Jacques saluting a portrait of King Albert. Against the protests of his wife, he sends the boy to a German-controlled orphanage to learn respect for the kaiser. Later, von Krutz is captured in battle. American officer Jefferson Strong is sent behind German lines to find and destroy a cache of "liquid fire" (a napalm-like weapon). He takes Krutz's identity and forges a letter to Yvonne that leads her to believe that he is a friend of her husband acting with his knowledge and approval. 127 128 / C~cil B. D~Mill~'s Hollywood In the orphanage Jacques is punished for defending King Albert's name. He is brought home to be disciplined and is surprised to see that Strong has taken his uncle's place. Strong pretends to punish the boy for the benefit of the German gatekeeper, and the boy subsequently returns to the institution. Yvonne tells Strong that he is like no other German she's met and reveals that she is Belgian. Taking a chance, Strong reveals his identity. With Yvonne's support he finds the store of liquid fire and directs the American army to tunnel from the allied trenches, under the Krutz home, to a position directly beneath the deadly storage depot. The plan is to blow up the jellied gasoline at the precise moment ofan American charge "over the top." In the meantime, the children are scheduled to be sent to a German munitions factory, and von Krutz escapes from an Allied prison camp. Jacques helps the children break out of the orphanage and leads them to his home. They have just enough time to take the tunnel to the American lines before the big blast. Krutz returns. The children take the wrong tunnel. Strong escapes the German's clutches, realizes the children are in danger, cuts the wires just as the switch is thrown, and single-handedly defends the tunnel against a German attack led by von Krutz. The children arrive in the American trench just as the attack is to begin. Soldiers are sent to save Strong, and von Krutz is killed in action. Now, despite the fact that he acted to save the lives of war orphans, Strong faces court martial for interfering with the American attack. Fortunately , Jacques locates King Albert and asks the monarch to personally intervene on Strong's behalf. Strong is acquitted, and the king tells Jacques that he will come back when the Americans have rid Belgium of the hated Hun. DeMille gave the film his usual polished effort, but Till I Come Back to You is not one of his mightier achievements. King Albert's cameo appearance at the beginning of the film is not particularly unusual for a wartime drama, but his direct intervention as a character at the climactic court martial is virtually without precedent. In DeMille's defense it should be said that Albert did lead Belgian troops in the...