IN SAYING
EVERYTHING ABOUT A MOVIE?
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IN SAYING EVERYTHING ABOUT A MOVIE? |
| MAJOR AND THE MINOR, THE (director: Billy Wilder; screenwriters: Charles Brackett/from the play Connie Goes Home by Edward Childs/from the Saturday Evening Post story Sunny Goes Home by Fannie Kilbourne; cinematographer: Leo Tover; editor: Doane Harrison; music: Robert Emmett Dolan; cast: Cast: Ginger Rogers (Susan Applegate), Ray Milland (Major Philip Kirby), Rita Johnson (Pamela Hill), Robert Benchley (Mr. Osborne), Frankie Thomas (Cadet Osborne), Diana Lynn (Lucy Hill), Edward Fielding (Col. Hill), Frankie Thomas (Cadet Osborne), Raymond Roe (Cadet Wigton), Lela Rogers (Mrs. Applegate); Runtime: 100; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Arthur Hornblow Jr.; Paramount; 1942) |
| "The
effervescent
farce
proved
to
be a classic comedy."
Reviewed
by
Dennis Schwartz German
emigre
Billy Wilder
("The Apartment"/"Some Like it Hot"/"Stalag 17")
shoots his first film
as director in Hollywood. The film turned out to be a
critical and
box-office hit. It was remade in 1955 as 'You're Never
Too Young.'
Star Ginger Roger's real mom plays her mom in the
film. It's suggested from
the
play
Connie
Goes
Home by Edward Childs and from the Saturday
Evening Post story Sunny Goes Home by Fannie
Kilbourne. Wilder and
Charles Brackett wrote the screenplay as a fluffy
comedy and to be a
commercial film. The effervescent farce proved to
be a classic comedy. The twentysomething Susan
Applegate
(Ginger
Rogers) worked at many jobs unsuccessfully
in NY and her
latest work is at a job where she makes house calls to
give scalp
massages. One lecherous customer too many, in a Mr. Osborne
(Robert
Benchley), has
the upset Susan leaving the big city
for good. On the train home to Iowa, she discovers she
doesn't have
enough money for the fare and thereby masquerades as a
12-year-old to
pay the reduced child fare. On the train she meets the
protective Major
Philip
Kirby (Ray
Milland) and
retreats to his sleeping compartment
when caught smoking by the conductor. When the train
is stalled by a
flood, Philip's
selfish
fiancée Pamela (Rita
Johnson) and
future
father-in-law, Colonel Hill (Edward
Fielding),
arrive to give him a
lift to the school. Pamela is suspicious of the
fare-beater now named Su-Su; and Kirby, an instructor
at the all boys' academy, brings Susan to the school
to prove she's a
minor. Easily
clearing up
that Susan is a 12-year-old, Kirby insists the minor
stay at the Hill
home until an adult member of her family escorts her
home. Susan
becomes a love target
of the cadets and befriends Pam's aspiring scientist
sister Lucy (Diana
Lynn), and learns that Kirby
wants active war-time duty but Pam pulls strings with
her father's
friends to keep him at the school. REVIEWED ON 6/24/2011 GRADE: B- Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ |