20th Century Fox was certainly doing their
best to promote their child star Peggy Ann Garner after she won a Special
Oscar for her performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In this one and her
next film Home, Sweet Homicide they tailored the films around her in a family
setting. Both are terrific. Fine ensemble casts in which they surround Garner
with some veterans and give them smart scripts to act with. As much as I
enjoyed the dialogue in Home, Sweet Homicide this one is even better and
I was surprised to see they had different writers. They are both witty, full
of overlapping dialogue and have multiple references to Hollywood. Both films
seem to have fallen through the cracks of time but are on par with the Mickey
Rooney and Deanna Durbin teenage films of their time. In fact, both films
seem to be modeled on Durbin's early family films in which she is Miss Fix
It, trying to solve the problems in the family. But no music.
Here she is part of a nuclear family of father-mother and two daughters.
Upper middle class living on 86th street on the east side of NYC in
an apartment building with door man, elevator operator and their own maid.
Maids are de rigueur. The father (Allyn Joslyn) and mother (Sylvia Field)
have a loving sweet relationship, the 16-year old daughter (Mona Freeman)
has a series of boys showing up at the door to date her - and Peggy is thirteen
and thinks she knows it all from movies she has seen. She is of course the
one to screw everything up by seeing a scene between her father and the daughter
of his boss and jumping to the wrong conclusion that they are having an affair.
But she tries to fix it by finding another lover for the woman. It all goes
wrong.
What I really enjoyed about the film is how the writers gave everyone no
matter how small their role was, a memorable funny bit. All the boys that
come courting get their own personality and moment to shine (Mel Torme is
one of them), the maid is curt and funny, Peggy's best friend played by Barbara
Whiting who is also her best friend in Home Sweet Homicide (sister of the
terrific jazz singer Margaret Whiting) gets some of the best lines, the black
maid in Barbara's apartment is only in it for a minute but gets a few good
remarks in. By the way, she is Ruby Dandridge and her best part was as the
mother of Dorothy Dandridge. The father is constantly low-key amusing henpecked
by his two daughters.
And as I mentioned there are Hollywood references throughout from Garner
and her best friend. My favorites were when Garner tries to explain that
her father is fooling around and says "Do you remember the picture when Clark
Gable is married to Joan Crawford and Myrna Loy was his secretary. It's like
that.". To which the friend replies "Well you better do something because
Myrna Loy certainly made a dope out of that wife". I think this is a made
up movie. And later the friend says "You have to stop thinking about it or
you will have a mental collapse like Bette Davis", "Which Bette Davis movie?",
"Every Bette Davis movie". And the final reference is particularly
sentimental and sweet - Garner comes out of her room at the end of the film
looking like a million bucks (for a 13-year old) ready for her date and the
camera pans in to her gleaming happy face and in the background Somewhere
Over the Rainbow begins to play alluding to Garland - and her name in the
film is Judy. It is a perfect old-fashioned movie moment.
