User Reviews

meningitis several years before--learned to read lips awfully fast but she was speaking...easier lipreading NOT that accurate didn't' ask people to say things twice disdain for Blairs

I have a different insight into this film than most viewers since I am the father of a deaf daughter. So, I realized there were a few mistakes...but they certainly won't bother the average viewer. So, when I laugh when I see a woman learn to PERFECTLY speech read (the newer term for lip reading)...as almost no one can do it like the character does in this movie and most other films featuring deaf folks. No, deaf people cannot magically and perfectly understand folks by watching their lips...just like blind people cannot read with their fingers like Daredevil!

When the story begins, Emily Blair (Loretta Young) is seeing yet another specialist who informs her they cannot cure her deafness. You see, she recently lost her hearing due to meningitis (and learned to read lips almost INSTANTLY). However, a very grouchy young doctor, Dr. Vance (Alan Ladd) MIGHT be able to help her. So she puts her life into his hands...which is tough since he HATES the Blair family and has a hard time separating that from Emily.

At the same time, Emily's fiancée (Barry Sullivan) is waiting and waiting...two years. And, not surprisingly, he's tired of waiting and has fallen in love with Emily's sister (Susan Hayward). But, because he wants to be a good and faithful guy he STILL plans to marry Emily...but his heart certainly isn't in it!

So what's to become of all this melodrama? See the film...you'll enjoy it. Overall, it well acted though I WISH they had Ladd play someone who WASN'T grouchy as he played a grouch in MOST of his films!! Still, despite this, Young and the rest are quite good and the film a nice date night film...provided your date likes old films. If she doesn't...dump her (I am kidding).

Although she got second billing to Ladd, Young's articulate smooth projection of her character shines in this movie. Ladd probably got the top spot because in 1944 all men were fighting overseas leaving the women to make up the majority of the audience. Still, his portrayal is very believable as one who has humble beginnings yet rises in the class structure while still showing rough edges. The poor boy and rich girl theme is not as boring as it seems. The Ladd-Young interaction works well as their characters develop a reluctant caring for one another.

The supporting cast and crew represent a Hollywood Who's Who at the time. Beulah Bondi is one of the great supporting actors of the 30s and 40s. Her appearances while cameo always added depth to her films. Susan Hayward is superb as the brash assertive sister. One could go on: Barry Sullivan with his mellow distinctive voice; costumes by Edith Head, one of the great ladies of Hollywood; music by Victor Young.

Yes, the movie is dated. The Great Depression looms in the background. But that is also its strength. Seldom was the Depression ever directly mentioned in the cinema. It truly was one of the most formative experiences of American life because it affected the entire population. While class envy always existed in our collective culture class hatred never engendered much support. This movie touches on this with sophistication.

Alan Ladd and Loretta Young were teamed up again after starring together in China 1943. Both are well suited to their roles in And Now Tomorrow. Ladd, as the hard working doctor, who works at a Pittsburgh free clinic. Young, as the wealthy heiress, who travels the globe. looking for a cure for her deafness.

Dr. Vance (Ladd) arrives at the home of his friend and mentor, Dr. Meeks (Cecil Kellaway), who asks Lance for a favor. He wants Vance to use his new methods of curing hearing loss on socialite, Emily Blair. Vance refuses, saying he is much to busy helping the poor. However, Vance does have a grudge with the Blair family. He doesn't like that they live like royalty, while the people who work their mills, live difficult lives. Furthermore, Vance's father had a run in with Emily's father years before and was fired.

Yet, with a twinkle in his eye, Vance agrees to dine at the Blair palace with Dr. Meeks. During the evening, Dr. Vance and Emily are alone together. Vance mentions Dr. Meeks plan to have him help Emily. She is startled and amused. She has traveled the globe to find a cure for her deafness. How could this doctor, a man no one has heard of, help her? Vance had expected such a response. He gets up to leave and says, "Deafness isn't the only thing I'd like to cure you of."

Dr. Meeks eventually gets Vance to agree to treat Emily. It's a long procedure that will take months and may not be successful. Initially the two are at odds with each other. Vance doesn't think the Blair's wealth enables Emily to show up late for appointments. Emily thinks Vance is lacking in manners.

A pivotal part of the movie occurs when Dr. Vance is called to shantytown to look at a man's (Anthony Caruso) sick child. Emily is with Vance and helps him perform an emergency operation. Emily gets to see a different world first hand. Vance is impressed that Emily comes through in the clutch. As a side note, it's not the first or last time Caruso appeared in a Alan Ladd film. Caruso was a busy, talented actor, who appeared in ten Alan Ladd films. It wasn't a coincidence. When Ladd and Caruso were struggling actors they sat together at an audition. Afterwards, Caruso asked Ladd to lunch, but Ladd was broke and had to refuse. Caruso's father stepped in and bought lunch. Ladd never forgot the act of kindness and gave Caruso a part in his films if he could. And Caruso couldn't believe the loyalty you just don't find in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, the treatments aren't working on Emily. Vance decides to go back to the clinic in Pittsburgh. Emily, gets back to her life and her fiance (Barry Sullivan). She plans to get married and is resigned to the fact she will never be cured. On the eve of her wedding Emily learns that Vance has had a success with a new method. She rushes to Vance and begs him to try the method on her, although it hasn't been tested on humans. He relents, and gives her the treatment. She reacts badly and collapses. There is a fear she won't live, but she survives.

The next morning Emily wakes to learn she can now hear. She soon learns her fiance has been having an affair with her sister. The wedding is officially off. She rushes to Pittsburgh to thank Dr. Vance. She phones him from his outer office, commenting he has a lovely voice. He realizes that she can hear and that his treatment has worked. She informs him the wedding is off and she'd like to repay him. They embrace.

It's an excellent film with many strong performances. The plot wobbles occasionally, but the cast really holds things together. Young gives her usual excellent performance. Both Susan Hayward and Barry Sullivan are excellent in small roles. But for me, it's Ladd's work that is most enjoyable. Years ago, film critics, like Bosley Crowther, delighted in telling us what a terrible actor Ladd was. Later, authors of film history books repeated the same old legends. Even noted television hosts, like Dick Cavett, would ridicule his talents. Funny thing is audiences enjoyed his work and flocked to his films for 20 years. He has always been one of my favorites. I guess I always made my own decisions on what was good and what I liked. Alan Ladd was simply one of the best.

Loretta Young has lost her hearing due to a bout of meningitis. She meets a hollywood handsome doctor who has decided to try to cure her. He falls for her beautiful self, only thing is she's engaged to a man she loves. Unbeknownst to her the fiancé has fallen in love with her sister. Also unbeknownst to her she has fallen for the doctor. This is a melodrama made more interesting by the caliber of the actors, especially Susan Hayward.

....must one (wo)man have Before he (she) can hear people cry ?(Dylan)

Emily may be deaf ,but as a spoiled child from the high society ,she is mainly deaf to her less fortunate fellow men,as her father and family were (the short Christmas flashback may seem irrelevant but it makes sense in that context).Good doctor Alan Ladd -a very Borzagesque character- is her contrary:he was not born silver spoon in hand ,he made it by the sweat of his brow and afterward ,he did not let the Poor down.Emily does not realize it ,but Dr Merek Vance is first a soul doctor.He tells him so several times but she's so selfish she is only busy looking after herself.The turning point in her life is the night the physician,with her by his side,saves a child's life .You can go as far as to say that ,beyond that point,she is not "deaf" anymore.

This is a fine melodrama,with a stellar cast including one of the future stars of the genre ,Susan Hayward as Emily's sister.

Like this? try these......

"Magnificent Obsession" J.M .Stahl,1935;Douglas Sirk,1954.

"Green light" Frank Borzage ,1937

"Doctor's wives " Frank Borzage ,1931

I don't usually like Loretta Young, but I admit when actors or actresses I don't care for give objectively good performances. Loretta plays a deaf woman, ill with meningitis, and she's very good. Her eyes are glued to her fellow actors' lips, and when they turn away from her for a moment, she gets a bewildered look on her face until they return to face her. She wipes the fear and shame away and asks, even though it humiliates her to do it, them to repeat themselves. It's very realistic and natural.

When she falls ill, Loretta breaks her engagement to Barry Sullivan, so that his quality of life isn't diminished for having to care for a sick person. Alan Ladd, a new, unknown doctor, wants to experiment on Loretta to see if he can cure her, and in the many months of the treatment, Barry falls in love with Loretta's sister, Susan Hayward.

And Now Tomorrow is very similar to Dark Victory, so if you liked one, there's a good chance you'll like the other. Part medical drama, part love story, and chalk full of beautiful clothes from Edith Head, this is an overlooked classic that's great to watch with a bowl of popcorn on a rainy afternoon.

This is a decent quality movie overall with some good people, some surprising to see together. That's the way I felt about Loretta Young and Alan Ladd. Somehow, Ms. Young came off kind of awkward in appearance here, perhaps partially due to compensations having to be made for the difference in height between the two leads. But she seemed less graceful overall than I've ever seen her, even in a lot of the costumes. As mentioned, this is a departure for Ladd in type and he's good enough doing what he did, but not 100% for the pairing. He seemed to be mocking and scoffing at Emily all the way through, despising her really rather extremely and then suddenly he's in love with her. Not so smooth a transition. Yet, I enjoyed some of it, but it was just too choppy between them overall. The ending was unforgivable. Ms. Young's automatic speaking of the title phrase was so flat and inept as was the following kiss, with Ladd looking like he was lying in her lap with his head on her chest. Just so awkward.

The rest of it was smooth enough, if not redeeming of the angst created by the above. Barry Sullivan was in very good looks here, Susan Hayward doing a good enough job. Ms. Bondi, as always, provided quality and authenticity in her unusual role as a society matron. Cecil Kellaway was wonderful. Maybe another try at some future date.

And Now Tomorrow was the second of two films that Alan Ladd did with Loretta Young. The first one was China an action/adventure wartime potboiler of a film. It was Alan Ladd's type of film that was made just before he was drafted. It was also not one of his best. And Now Tomorrow is more Loretta's kind of film and while it's better than China it will never be ranked as in the top ten for either Ladd or Young.

This one is a medical soap opera, the only time Ladd ever did one of these kind of films in his career. Young is a socialite who never thought about social problems in the town that she was brought up in which incidentally is named after her family, the town's chief employer. They own a mill from which Ladd's father was fired years ago. Now all grown up Ladd's got class resentments.

And he's back in his hometown at the behest of Dr. Cecil Kellaway who has heard of his experiments with curing deaf people who got it as a result of spinal meningitis. That's what gave Young her deafness and among other things postponed her marriage to another yuppie Barry Sullivan.

The main focus in this film is the growing mutual attraction between doctor and patient despite all their differences. A subplot also involves Sullivan seeing Young's sister Susan Hayward on the side.

And Now Tomorrow is kind of a secular version of Magnificent Obsession without all the religious folderol that Lloyd C. Douglas put into his work involved. For those who like soap opera type films And Now Tomorrow will do. Young made a ton of these in her career, but it wasn't Alan Ladd's cup of tea.

Alan Ladd and Loretta Young star in "And Now Tomorrow" from 1944, also starring Susan Hayward, Barry Sullivan, and Beulah Bondi.

Young is Emily Blair, a woman from a wealthy family, who becomes deaf after a bout of meningitis. She goes from specialist to specialist, but no one can help her. Finally the family doctor (Cecil Kellaway) brings in his protegee, Merek Vance (Ladd) now working in Pittsburgh, who has had success in curing deafness. They convince Emily to give his treatment a try, which means serum injections weekly for as long as it takes. But Vance promises to tell her right away if he thinks the treatments are useless.

Emily has delayed her marriage to Jeff (Sullivan) hoping for a cure, but in the interim, he and her sister Janice (Hayward) have fallen in love and are sneaking around.

This is an entertaining film, and I liked the pairing of Ladd and Young, though the script was choppy. The intentions of the characters were not clearly defined -- Vance is from the other side of the tracks and resents the Blair family, for whom his father worked. Then suddenly he's in love with Emily. Janice acts like she hates and is jealous of her sister sometimes, and other times, she's kind and loving. Emily herself is a society brat one minute and seems misunderstood the next.

The underlying subtext - I think - is that Emily is "deaf" to real life, and starts to "hear" and understand when she goes with the doctor to the home of a family in Shantytown. But you have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure that out, or to see 5000 films as I have.

One other thing which bothered me - this idea of not using the serum on Emily but testing it on charity patients. This is completely unethical. I know that Dr. Mellon, director of the Hospital Pasteur in Haiti, would not allow experimental drugs to be tested on Haitians. Testing drugs is done by volunteers who fit a set of parameters.

Nonetheless, I loved the actors, all of whom were very good. The author of the novel on which the film is based, Rachel Field, also wrote "All This, and Heaven Too," which was a beautiful film starring Bette Davis and Charles Boyer.

A society woman (Loretta Young) becomes profoundly deaf after falling ill with menangitis. She falls for a struggling doctor (Alan Ladd) after undergoing several failed treatments, while her duplicitous sister (Susan Heywood) falls for her fiancee (Barry Sullivan).

An at times rather stilted romantic melodrama based off a best seller by Rachel Field with some dodgy pseudo-science also at the heart of the story. This was also Ladd's first film for some time following war service.

This motion picture is based on the last novel author Rachel Field wrote before she died in 1942. Miss Field had previously written another bestseller for women that had been adapted for the screen-- a Bette Davis hit called ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO. Warner Brothers was keen to get its hands on this property as well, no doubt as a follow-up vehicle for Davis, but was outbid by Paramount. David Selznick also coveted the property, probably for his protege and future wife Jennifer Jones.

Loretta Young had signed a multi-picture deal with Paramount as a freelancer. The previous year she had made CHINA with Alan Ladd under the direction of John Farrow. CHINA was a project that Young was passionate about as she was very concerned about the plight of Chinese orphans during the war. During production of that film, she and Alan Ladd did not get along. Both were concerned about who would be perceived as the star. Farrow's direction probably favored Ladd, as the outdoor action scenes were played up. Both stars said they'd never work together again, but CHINA was a smash hit and the studio was very interested in re-pairing them.

A year later Young was assigned to the picturization of the Field story, with Joel McCrea intended to be her leading man. But McCrea had to drop out to do war work, so Franchot Tone was put in his place. However, Ladd had just been rejected for military service and was now available. Paramount wasted no time replacing Tone and assigning Ladd to begin work at once alongside Young...this time under director Irving Pichel. Not surprisingly, Young & Ladd quarreled again. Young accused Ladd of not looking directly at her in their scenes together.

In this story, Young is playing a deaf woman who is also a snob. Ladd is a doctor who must cure her of both things. Maybe Ladd felt he could cure Young of some of her on-set issues by not playing right into them, especially if she was insecure. Young would later accuse Ladd of being insecure. You get the point...these stars brought out the worst in each other...and the best in each other. AND NOW TOMORROW was another hit for Paramount.

It should be pointed out that Loretta Young had previously played a deaf woman in 20th Century Fox's THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL (1939) which was a big crowd pleaser. She seemed to have the market cornered on these types of roles. In this production, she is joined by Susan Hayward as her kid sister; and Beulah Bondi is on hand as their aunt. Meanwhile, Cecil Kellaway plays an older doctor who mentors Ladd.