1h 38min | Comedy, Musical, Romance | 12 December 1956 | Color, WS
Director: Norman Taurog
Stars: Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Adolphe Menjou.
Nick Castle ... musical numbers and dances staged by / choreographer (uncredited)
Watched online; blurry, cropped, I think.
Remake of Bachelor Mother (1939); cast ('56 order):
Eddie Fisher::David Niven
Debbie Reynolds::Ginger Rogers
Adolphe Menjou::Charles Coburn
6 songs in the Soundtracks: 4 solo EF, 1 duet EF & DR, 1 duet DR & Nita Talbot.
There's nothing really wrong with the performances. It's the premise: a newly fired woman is looking at listings outside an employment agency, when a baby on the doorstep of the foundling home next door is about to roll off the step. So she scoops it up, and a worker at the foundling home assumes it's hers. She makes the mistake of identifying herself and her employer (for one last night) before leaving the baby at the home. They recognize the employer as a generous philanthropist, and are sure they can convince him to restore her employment, so she can keep "her" baby. So DR's employment is now tied to retaining the child, and she does, falling in love with it. The employer's son falls for "mother" and child, the employer assumes the child is his son's, and I assume they make it all legal by film's end; I dozed off and didn't want to go back. I did see the "grandfather" pushing the stroller as the couple walked behind.
Without DNA or even blood testing, how do you establish that a child is not yours? Doesn't childbirth leave behind traces on a woman's body? So assuming she hadn't given birth, she could have established the kid wasn't hers. Then again, it wasn't a newborn, so maybe not. It was just all too contrived in both its incarnations.
RKO, dir. Taurog; 6-
