This most delightful of romantic screwball comedies is one of my all-time favorites because even though it has Ms. Russell once again in tailored suits telling men what to do and fighting romance when it approaches her, it is filled with such a high level of fun. She's the dean of a woman's college with a daughter she claims is adopted. Ray Milland is a British professor from a men's college who comes to America to give her a memento from a soldier who died with her name on his heart. She's become a household name with her picture on the cover of Time Magazine, and the press is anxious to find out dirt on her, anything they can, especially something proving that the little girl is actually hers by birth, not adoption. Milland gets thrown into the mix and everything goes haywire.
Edmund Gwenn gives a delightfully lively performance as her living life to the fullest father, anxious to see his daughter tie the knot. It is hard to believe they are related, because as intellectual as he is, he knows there's much more to life than late night meetings with the board of directors, and he is bored with this board. Mary Jane Saunders ("Sorrowful Jones") proves again she is a natural child actress, not cloying or precocious, just delightful. Janis Carter gets some good lines as the snoopy reporter ("My what big ears your switchboard has!" she gleefully says to herself upon hearing gossipy operator Jean Willes reveal information about Russell) while the town wags. "Hello, Merle? This is Pearl!" Willes croons in a delightful segment of the beginning of a rumor mill that is bound to keep you in stitches.
There's plenty of slapstick too-Milland riding a bicycle which seems to come apart at the seams, and Russell riding in a student's souped-up race car in an attempt to get away from Milland. Then, there's the future movie musical "Mame", Lucille Ball, in a cameo as herself at the beginning. "Is it true that everybody in California sleeps under one blanket?", Milland asks her, getting the drollest of responses. It's a shame that Russell wasn't in this sequence to have the other movie "Auntie Mame" with her as well. Francis Lederer's professor character seems to have no point in being here other than to sulk about Russell's lack of interest in him. But director Edward Buzzell keeps things buzzin' here, resulting in a fast-moving comedy worthy of further discovery and repeat viewings.
Edmund Gwenn gives a delightfully lively performance as her living life to the fullest father, anxious to see his daughter tie the knot. It is hard to believe they are related, because as intellectual as he is, he knows there's much more to life than late night meetings with the board of directors, and he is bored with this board. Mary Jane Saunders ("Sorrowful Jones") proves again she is a natural child actress, not cloying or precocious, just delightful. Janis Carter gets some good lines as the snoopy reporter ("My what big ears your switchboard has!" she gleefully says to herself upon hearing gossipy operator Jean Willes reveal information about Russell) while the town wags. "Hello, Merle? This is Pearl!" Willes croons in a delightful segment of the beginning of a rumor mill that is bound to keep you in stitches.
There's plenty of slapstick too-Milland riding a bicycle which seems to come apart at the seams, and Russell riding in a student's souped-up race car in an attempt to get away from Milland. Then, there's the future movie musical "Mame", Lucille Ball, in a cameo as herself at the beginning. "Is it true that everybody in California sleeps under one blanket?", Milland asks her, getting the drollest of responses. It's a shame that Russell wasn't in this sequence to have the other movie "Auntie Mame" with her as well. Francis Lederer's professor character seems to have no point in being here other than to sulk about Russell's lack of interest in him. But director Edward Buzzell keeps things buzzin' here, resulting in a fast-moving comedy worthy of further discovery and repeat viewings.