MATING OF MILLIE, THE

(director: Henry Levin; screenwriters: St. Clair McKelway/Louella MacFarlane/story by Adele Comandini; cinematographer: Joseph Walker; editor: Richard Fantl; music: Werner R. Heymann; cast: Glenn Ford (Doug Andrews), Evelyn Keyes (Millie McGonigle), Jimmie Hunt (Tommy Bassett), Mabel Paige (Mrs. Hanson), Ron Randell (Ralph Galloway), Virginia Hunter (Madge), Willard Parker (Phil Gowan); Runtime: 87; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Casey Robinson; Columbia; 1948)
“Agreeable but predictable romantic comedy.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Henry Levin (“Murderers’ Row”/”Genghis Khan”/”The Desperados”) directs this agreeable but predictable romantic comedy. It teams once again Glenn Ford with Evelyn Keyes, who made six pictures together. Writers St. Clair McKelway and Louella MacFarlane base it on the story by Adele Comandini.

Doug Andrews (Glenn Ford) is an aspiring writer who since he left the army has had a few deadend jobs with his latest as a Los Angeles bus driver, a job he quits in the middle of a run down Wilshire Boulevard on an impulse when upset with rude commuters who won’t move to the back of the crowded bus. On the bus was the head of personnel of Bullards’ Department Store, Millie McGonigle (Evelyn Keyes), who for some unfathomable reason (I guess to make the plot point work) offers the insulting bus driver a job. While interviewing the bachelor Doug for a floorwalker job, Millie learns that the adorable little boy in her apartment complex, Tommy Bassett (Jimmy Hunt), is left alone when his widowed mother dies in a traffic accident. The lonely but pretty businesswoman, all work and no play, herself an orphan, tries to adopt Tommy when he’s placed in a foundling home, but the director Mr. Galloway (Ron Randell) tells her that only married couples can adopt in California. Millie then schemes with the handsome but ill-mannered and flippant Doug, to find a husband for her in a marriage of convenience. It should come as no surprise that the two singles become drawn to each other and fall in love. Besides the obvious outcome, the story’s dumbness, and its annoying sentimentality, the stars are at least appealing enough to allow such banality to be watchable.

REVIEWED ON 10/15/2007 GRADE: C+