A food writer who has lied about being the perfect housewife must try to cover her deception when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her home for a traditional family Christmas.1h 42min | Comedy, Romance | 11 August 1945
Director: Peter Godfrey
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, Reginald Gardiner, SZ Sakall.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037595/
According to the Soundtracks, DM sings 2 songs, making this a borderline musical in my book.
I'm an enormous Barbara Stanwyck fan. Of the 49 of her titles that I've rated, only 1 scored below 6, and I expect to watch that again some day and find it not as horrible as the first time.
My prior rating for this was 7, and I stand by that. This is a pleasant bit of fluff. A comedy of deception, not too frantic, with the extra joke of pretending to have a baby (won't say more to protect future viewing).
BS does a great job showing us that she's falling for DM, and the film (and DM) shows us why. Of course, I love the fact that she's domestically incompetent, and buys herself a fur coat that costs 6 months salary. Her discomfort with children and animals is perfect, and DM being oblivious to it is testimony to the idea that if you're previously convinced that something is true, you won't notice evidence to the contrary.
SG is delightful in a comedic role (doesn't he always provide a bit of comic/eccentric relief, even when he's menacing in dramas?), and his intentions turned on a whiff of cooking odor here.
Cuddles Sakall is his scene-stealing self; delightful as always. I think he actually looked at SG and commented under his breath that SG was fat. (And SG _is_ wider than SzS, but...)
I've seen RG with more to do in other films, so they wasted him a bit, but he fulfills the stuffy suitor role perfectly. In fact, perhaps it's a bit odd that he's so initially cooperative in the deception.
Not such a strong comedy that it can pull me out of a funk, but a definite palate-cleanser after a run of dull mediocre films.
Warner, dir. Godfrey; 7
