User Reviews

Our story begins at a charity rodeo in New YOrk City where one of the cowboys (Fred MacMurray) meets and quickly falls in love with a song writer (Irene Dunne). They are next seen after their marriage as they return to the ranch, where MacMurray has 2 young daughters from his previous marriage (which ended with the death of his wife). The ranch is a simple one that shows promise, but the overarching problem is water rights. The Wyoming folks enthusiastically welcome the new wife...except for neighboring rancher William Demarest, who holds the water rights. Dunne fits right in...except for with Demarest, whom she accidentally humiliates at a party. Much of the early part of the film traces her difficult (but good-spirited) adjustment to ranch life. Then, she accidentally kills Demarest's prize steer. She almost returns to New York where she could quickly earn money to help pay for more water rights, but she feels she is needed by the children and her husband, so declines the Broadway job. But, eventually things go from bad to worse, and she does return to New York, only for MacMurray to be dragged (or should I say carried) by Andy Devine to patch things up.

This is a somewhat typical romantic comedy, but they resist the common temptation to resort to an imagined affair and jealousy as a reason to scotch the marriage and lead to kissing and making up. That's where I thought it was going, but thank goodness they followed a somewhat more realistic route. The one complaint I have is that a simple solution would be for her to work on her music at the ranch and not have to return to New York City. Ah well, that would be too obvious.

Irene Dunne is wonderful here. Humorous and warm...perfect for the role. Fred MacMurray should never have taken the role on "My Three Sons"; it forever tainted his career, and people mostly forget what an important and beloved actor he was; he's very good here an believable as a cowboy/rancher. William Demarest is almost cartoonish here; they should have lightened him up just a tad. Andy Devine is seen mostly at the beginning and ending of the film, but he's good here, and important the story line. Natalie Wood again is a young girl, the elder daughter; she seemed like a natural.

Nice gentle humor with a warm love story. A very nice film.

After watching some eps from the Death In Paradise box set I gave him as a Father's Day present,my dad started checking what films were on BBC iPlayer. Both of us being fans of his movies since seeing the Flubber flicks,we were pleased to find a rare Fred MacMurray that had just screened,which would hopefully not have a dull moment.

The plot:

Taking care of his daughters after the death of their mum/his wife, Chris Heyward raises cash by being a rodeo who travels across states. During a visit to New York,Heyward crosses paths with singer Kay Kingsley,and falls in love for the first time since he became a widow. Catching each other up in a whirlwind romance,the couple get married,and Kingsley leaves the songs,to join Heyward and his kids on the farm. Despite getting a warm welcome,Kingsley is unable to shake the feeling that she is suited to the limelight,rather than the farm life.

View on the film:

Getting knee-deep into all the farmyard chores,the very pretty Irene Dunne (who replaced Myrna Loy) gives a wonderful performance as Kingsley,whose singing glitters with gold that Dunne melts down into a Southern belle. Joined by a very young Natalie Wood (and future Rebel Without a Cause co-star Ann Doran) Fred MacMurray gives a great performance as Heyward,with MacMurray throwing Screwball Comedy haystacks in exchanges with Andy Devine's very funny Orvie.

Keeping the Comedy and Melodrama lassos spinning, MacMurray gives a warm sincerity to Heyward's attempts to support Kingsley getting used to a different lifestyle. Bringing Frank Capra's cinematographer Joseph Walker down on the farm,director George Marshall impressively finds ultra-stylised barns for the daily grind of the family,via rustic tracking shots going over the muddy boots and family dog leaping for joy,to elegant overlapping shots listening in on local gossip,in a town that never has a dull moment.

Question: How does a New York City gal fit in out in the country as a new bride? Response: I don't know. Is this Barbara Stanwyck in "The Purchase Price", Merle Oberon in "The Cowboy and the Lady", Claudette Colbert in "The Egg and I" or Eva Gabor on "Green Acres"? Real Answer: Well, in this case, it's Irene Dunne in "Never a Dull Moment" where she is ironically wed to Fred MacMurray who did basically the same thin in "The Egg and I". Instead of a chicken farmer here, though, he is a rodeo performer, and she is a Broadway songwriter. The predicament is pretty much the same for Dunne as it was for Colbert, except for the fact that MacMurray has two young daughters (Gigi Perreau and Natalie Wood) who are at first suspicious of her but are won over when she gives them designer watches as "Hi, I'm your new step-mommy dearest" presents. Then, there's the gossipy neighbors on party lines, an overweight Indian cook who practically drowns herself in Dunne's perfume while trying to fit into Dunne's dresses, and the grouchy rancher (William Demarest) keeping his water supply all to himself and anxious to buy MacMurray's property himself. When he is humiliated at Dunne's opening night party, you know he's going to be doing all he can to get them out, but Dunne has a trick or two up her gingham sleeve.

One very funny scene has Dunne fighting practically every kind of disaster (including the wind which threatens to tear down the house) all at once. MacMurray is pretty much overshadowed by Dunne who dominates pretty much the entire movie. She is still youthful enough here to do pratfalls, sing a square dance and remain glamorous as she figures out how to close a swinging gate surrounded by mud without getting filthy herself. To think the same year she played Queen Victoria in "The Mudlark" shows her versatility, but unfortunately, she was on the verge of permanently ending her film career. Perreau and Wood start off in dangerous territory as they appear to be hateful brats, but fortunately, the writers changed course quickly. The results of all of this is a watchable but formula comedy that has some unique moments but basically suffers from familiarity.

I love this movie.

Irene Dunne is one of my favorite actresses and one of America's all-time greats. She is typically marvelous in this film. Fred MacMurray is likewise a real personal favorite. Together this wonderful, talented duo create two likable, sympathetic characters that you root for and that you want to find happiness together. Of course, it is never in doubt that they will end up together, but the complications along the way are made much more enjoyable and the slapstick is boosted beyond the ordinary because of the great personal charm and fantastic timing of these two leads. Irene Dunne, in particular, is one of the masters of comic timing.

Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau both portray their characters very credibly. Their enthusiasm over the wrist watches that Dunne gives them is also a neat reflection of the simpler values and expectations and the more modest means of that time. They have some cute dialog. In her youth Wood may have been cuter, but seldom as realistic as in this role. Perreau may be remembered best as the young Lark in Enchantment, with David Niven.

The clever repartee between Dunne and William Demarest when she first arrives at the ranch is classic 30's and 40's script writing. The scene when MacMurray's cronies wake him up at 5 a.m. to go cougar hunting and then all make themselves at home in his bedroom on the double bed with Dunne is also a load of fun. (Please note that this was still in the double bed era of film-making, which is also something I kind of watch for.) The running gag about the dog is a lot of fun, too.

One aspect of this movie seems to get overlooked. It provides a glimpse of life among working people in rural (and even small town) America that is not too distant in time, but is all but forgotten. Those people had to work a great deal harder at life than we do today. Cooking and washing were real chores. Life on a ranch was especially difficult. Besides the opportunities for slapstick humor, these chores provide us a glimpse of that hard life that people lived not so long ago. When MacMurray comes home late one night after butchering a steer, he is beat. His weariness is palpable. The scene is full of warmth between the characters, and it reflects real understanding of that hard life.

This film offers both slapstick and great comic dialog. However, it also provides endearing characters in situations with just enough real-life type conflict to make this romantic comedy very charming and poignant. In the hands of a lesser cast, this movie might have been very ordinary, but because of Dunne and MacMurray it is a real delight. I regard this as one of the last of the screwball comedies - and a very good one. I have tried to find it on DVD.

PS - Irene Dunne's last film appearance was in It Grows on Trees (1952), a wonderful and quirky modern day (1950's) fairy tale. It is very rare, and utterly delightful. But if you don't like this film, you probably should not bother with it.

Having seen the lovely Irene Dunne perform many years ago in her better known movie "The Awful Truth" (1937), I looked with great expectations forward to watching my recently acquired DVD "Never a Dull Moment".

However, I soon realized the awful truth that this movie was much below par to any previous movie she has ever starred in. Irene Dunne who was 52 years old at the time and approaching the end of her movie career was poorly matched with Fred MacMurray who was 10 years her junior, which might also explain perhaps the lack of chemistry between the two stars.

The script writing is very poor and lacking of any clever and witty dialog for both of them to work on. In my opinion they could have made the courtship a bit more interesting with some romantic interludes included, instead what we see are a few minutes of the bottom half of legs shoveling through hallways; very unimaginative and cheaply done, but I suppose the priority might have been to get them in a hurry out into the rural country side for all the silly slapstick action.

Irene Dunne also sings in this movie but as much as I love and admire Irene for having been a great actress, singing was definitely not one of her strongest attributes and especially the first number is quite embarrassing; it would have been better if a professional singer had dubbed her voice. It is also made quite obvious that the fast horse riding and being thrown of the horse was done by a stunt person.

All in all a big disappointment, mainly due to bad directing and bad script writing and a sad end to what has otherwise been a great acting career for Irene Dunne, however this movie might appeal to children 8 to 14 on a rainy Sunday afternoon, mainly for the silly slapstick humor and uncomplicated story line which might be more appealing to this age group

... nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet. Alas, songwriter and novelist Kay Swift lost out badly in this adaptation of her novel which sees Irene Dunne clearly portraying someone based on Swift, i.e. a sophisticated Manhattan-based songwriter improbably 1) attending a rodeo in Madison Square Garden, 2) agreeing to a date with bronco buster Fred MacMurray (in real life ten years younger than the then 52 year old Dunne) and 3) marrying him and moving to his 'ranch' in the West and taking on his two sub-teen daughters, Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau. In terms of comedies Dunne had made her fair share, especially with Cary Grant (The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife) of actual funny comedies and also displayed her dramatic chops - her previous film to this was I Remember Mama, but she must have been aware of times' winged chariot to sign on for this turkey whose idea of conflict is having her shoot neighbour William Demarest's prize bull thinking it was a cougar and, oh, yes, Demarest controls all the water in the area.. In terms of funny it makes Russell Brand seem like Jack Benny.

Though Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray had only appeared together in one previous picture, Paramount's INVITATION TO HAPPINESS (1939), they were good friends and eager to reunite on screen. Miss Dunne was coming off an Oscar-nominated turn for I REMEMBER MAMA, and she would only make one more film after this. After her last picture, she teamed up with MacMurray for a third costarring venture, a radio program called Bright Star which aired during the 1952-53 season and ran for 52 episodes.

In NEVER A DULL MOMENT (no relation to Disney's 1968 offering with the same title), Miss Dunne is cast as a singer-songwriter that falls for Mr. MacMurray, who plays a Wyoming cowboy. The script for this romantic comedy-drama is based on a bestselling autobiographical novel by Kay Swift, an east coast composer who was hired to direct light music at the 1939 World's Fair. During the World Fair rodeo, Miss Swift met and fell in love with a cowboy from Oregon not Wyoming.

Their whirlwind courtship led to marriage. She moved out west and adjusted to life on her new husband's ranch. In a way it's a version of THE EGG AND I, which previously featured MacMurray...and the gist of the story concerns itself with the misadventures Dunne has in a rustic environment as a proverbial fish out of water. She expends a lot of energy winning over the locals.

While some of the incidents depicted on screen may come across naive to a modern audience, the scenario probably seemed fresh and innovative in 1950. The lines spoken by the two leads convey sharp comedic timing and wit. To say that Dunne and MacMurray are well--matched is an understatement, and the pairing reminds me of MacMurray's earlier work with Carole Lombard. Miss Dunne was a skilled singer who excelled at dramatic stories, but she also had a natural flair for comedy, going back to her first comedic vehicle THEODORA GOES WILD.

The wild and woolly antics that occur during the movie are put over with help from an excellent supporting cast. Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau are on hand as MacMurray's daughters from a previous marriage.

Meanwhile, a rival rancher provides conflict in a subplot about a battle for water rights. He's played by William Demarest, who later teamed up with MacMurray on the long-running TV sitcom My Three Sons.

If there's a bit of familiarity to the proceedings, that is not exactly a drawback. Sometimes we like to be able to predict the outcome. This is a good old-fashioned story about two people from different worlds coming together to build a new life. Though the marriage of Miss Swift and her cowboy rancher husband didn't last, the fictional version played by Dunne and MacMurray will...because they make a perfect couple who can go the distance.