tles7-676-109633
To watch June Allyson fake playing the piano is hysterical. She is late on some banging of the chords and early on others...tentative. It's so obvious that they should have given up or practiced better. At least in La La Land, it looked like he was playing most of the time. Also, to believe that Van Johnson couldn't tell that June was the same person as an adult and a child is asking too much. This was done much better in The Major and the Minor (even then...Ginger Rogers didn't look like a kid, either). MGM took advantage of the audience believability in many their movies. Most people didn't sing for themselves and they obviously thought they could get people to believe that June could play piano in this film. Oh my gosh....terrible!!
edwagreen
Didn't the maid played by Esther Dale have a strong resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt? I thought I was seeing the former first lady in the role.An absolutely delightful film with June Allyson acting as a 14 year old so that her talents could be displayed. Van Johnson is the impresario, quite a character with so many clients, that hardly anything gets done. Gig Young portrays the reporter willing to go along with the story so that he can get his girlfriend Allyson and finally get a good scoop on a fantastic story of a hoax being perpetrated.Allyson is so cute as the masquerading 14 year old. She goes along with this since when she introduces her real self, Johnson couldn't care less, only wanting the young lass for musical fame.Keeping her in line becomes a focus and the two, even though he thinks she is still a child, develop feelings for each other.
boblipton
This variation on Brackett & Wilder's THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR transposes the story from a military Academy background to the world of concert music. And while Brackett & Wilder's work is run as a purely and vastly enjoyable piece of straight farce, Hackett & Goodrich's script, while not as funny, makes some serious, if understated points about the freak-show aspects of show business.Van Johnson and June Allyson are good in their roles. Indeed, Miss Allyson shows a lot more range than she is usually given the chance for. Credit long-time director Robert Leonard, who, after a long career was winding down in MGM's B department -- he was directing Oscar winners like THE GREAT ZIEGFELD in the 1930s, but didn't move into the Freed unit in the 1940s, which left him odd man out. Cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, one of the key cameramen in setting up the glossy MGM visual style, uses a lot of low and askew camera angles.Yet with all these advantages, there is something mechanical and depressing about the entire production. Brackett and Wilder's effort is time-bound in language and setting, but it is meant to be nothing more than fun and succeeds. This does not. I do not wish to point too accusatory a finger, but Miss Allyson, a very hard-working performer, never developed any of the arts of stardom. She remained, to the end, a capable performer, eager to please and hard working, but she lacks the skills to carry this off. The result is a good movie, not a great one.
Ripshin
Did anyone notice that background music written for "The Wizard of Oz" was used in the opening credits and background music for this film? In "Oz", the music plays over the opening scene of Dorothy and Toto running along the road, presumably after encountering Miss Gulch. You hear it many times afterwards. I guess, for this film, they pulled it from the MGM music library, not knowing "Oz" would become such a classic, and that any bit of music from it would be so recognizable over sixty years later. The original piece for "Oz" was (erroneously)titled "Trouble in School." UPDATE: I have been informed that the above-mentioned piece of music is actually not original to "Oz," but is,in fact, a classically composed children's melody.
