Production Background
The Mortal Storm was one of the few directly anti-Nazi Hollywood films released before the American entry into World War II in December 1941. The film stars James Stewart as a German who refuses to join the rest of his small Bavarian town in supporting Nazism. He falls in love with Freya Roth (Margaret Sullavan), the daughter of a Junker mother and a "non-Aryan" father. The Mortal Storm was the last movie Sullavan and Stewart made together.
Freya and her father are implied to be Jews but the word "Jew" is never used, and they are only identified as "non-Aryans"; in addition, Freya's half brothers are all members of the Nazi Party. Though it is understood that the film is set in Germany, the name of the country is rarely mentioned except at the very beginning in a short text of introduction. MGM purposely did not mention the name of the country or the religion of Freya's family because of the large German market for its films, but it was to no avail—the movie infuriated the Nazi government and it led to all MGM films being banned in Germany.
The supporting cast includes Robert Young (Jim Anderson on "Father Knows Best", and Marcus on "Marcus Welby, MD"), Robert Stack ("The Untouchables (1959 TV series)"), Frank Morgan (Professor Marberg and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz), Dan Dailey, Ward Bond (Bert the Cop on "It's a Wonderful Life"), Maria Ouspenskaya, William T. Orr, and Bonita Granville, who was the first actress to play Nancy Drew onscreen.
The film is based on the 1938 novel The Mortal Storm by the British writer Phyllis Bottome. Mountain snow scenes were filmed at Salt Lake City, Utah and Sun Valley, Idaho.
The score by award winning composer Bronislau Kaper, and Eugene Zador (whom normally orchestrated) was not credited to them, but rather a pseudonym, "Edward Kane".
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