It’s all but impossible not to fall for Doris Day in this spectacularly likeable film debut. Fourth-billed, behind Jack Carson, Janis Paige & Don DeFore, she already gets the most screen time and five of the six solo song numbers. (Plus reprise, while supporting players S.K. Sakall & Oscar Levant get as much footage as the other nominal leads.) The story is plenty silly: jealous spouses DeFore & Paige spy on each other while Day pretends to be Paige on a South American cruise and Private Eye Carson keeps tabs on her, trying not to get involved with his client’s ‘wife.’ Thanks to its Julius & Philip Epstein script, the farcical doings are cleanly diagramed and neatly parsed by director Michael Curtiz who keeps it from turning too stupid. Everything much helped by a wildly stylized look from designers Anton Grot & Howard Winterbottom that inflates curvy late-’40s lines into cartoon glamor, even the furniture has big shoulders. Add on one top drawer tune (‘It’s Magic’), a door slamming Feydeau-like set piece that really works, and a nifty vaudeville routine for Oscar Levant & Carson to drink each other under the table without touching a drop of the stuff, and Jack Warner had a considerable hit on his hands along with a big new star. And check out the WOW TechniColor transfer on the Warner DVD. It’s no M-G-M/Arthur Freed/Vincente Minnelli musical classic, but first-rate product in its way.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: Billed ahead of Day, Janis Paige is entirely eclipsed. And her next Day encounter was even worse as the sole B’way principal of the hit musical THE PAJAMA GAME not used in the 1957 film. In the biggest disappointment of her career, the starring role went to Doris Day.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Were beefy guys like Carson & DeFore really the best Warners could come up with for Day & Paige?
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