MY BLUE HEAVEN
(director: Henry Koster; screenwriters: story “Stork Don’t Bring Babies”by S.K. Lauren/Claude Binyon/Lamar Trotti; cinematographer: Arthur E. Arling; editor: James B. Clark; music: Alfred Newman/Harold Arlen/Ralph Blane; cast: Betty Grable (Kitty Moran), Dan Dailey (Jack Moran), David Wayne (Walter Pringle), Jane Wyatt (Janet Pringle), Mitzi Gaynor (Gloria Adams), Una Merkel (Miss Irma Gilbert), Louise Beavers (Selma), Laura Pierpont (Mrs. Johnston), John Burton (Lawyer); Runtime: 96; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Sol C. Siegel; 20th Century Fox; 1950)
“The contrived plot is a bit gooey.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Routine musical comedy that has some pleasant song-and-dance routines, a scene stealing cute dog and is lushly filmed in Technicolor, but the contrived plot is a bit gooey. Director Henry Koster (“The Bishop’s Wife”/”The Robe”/”My Man Godfrey”) keeps it sitcom friendly. The film is the first modern-day movie to include its free rival television in its storyline in a positive way. It’s based on the story “Stork Don’t Bring Babies” by S.K. Lauren and is written by Claude Binyon and Lamar Trott. Mitzi Gaynor, at 18, makes her film debut. The popular team of Betty Grable and Dan Dailey would make four pictures together, and were on top of their game when this pic was made.
The songs included are: “My Blue Heaven,” “It’s Deductible,” “What a Man,” “Halloween,” “I Love a New Yorker,” “Live Hard, Work Hard, Love Hard,” “The Friendly Islands,” “Don’t Rock the Boat Dear” and “Cosmo Cosmetics.”
Happily married for 9 years but childless showbiz couple, Jack (Dan Dailey) and Kitty Moran (Betty Grable), who do a popular song and comedy variety show in Manhattan on radio, are in heaven expecting their first child. After a minor car accident, Kitty suffers a miscarriage and is told she can never again have a child. The couple looks to adopt, but are turned down by the prim and stodgy owner of the Sarah Wilson Foundation, Mrs. Johnson (Laura Pierpont), an old-fashioned adoption agency, because she fears the stage couple associate with the wrong element. The married script writer team of Walter (David Wayne) and Kitty Moran (Jane Wyatt) feel responsible that the Moran’s lost the baby due to a loud party they threw where Mrs. Johnson made a surprise visit, so they arrange for an illegal adoption. But the mother’s shady lawyer steals back the baby.
A few other conflicts arise as the duo take their act from radio to TV, and in their personal life more options open up to get a child. As expected in such fluff, things get resolved in a sentimental and cloying way, as in the end we get an agreeable but trite Hollywood ending.
REVIEWED ON 7/12/2009 GRADE: C+