After a decade & a half split largely between playing business women in light vehicles (Mid-Atlantic accent tilting American) & prestige literary assignments in heavier ones (Mid-Atlantic accent tilting British), Rosalind Russell found parts drying up as she hit her mid-40s, then coming to her own rescue with a hit B’way musical (WONDERFUL TOWN) soon after making this little indie comedy produced by husband Frederick Brisson. The musical is a classic (Bernstein, Comden & Green); the film small potatoes (in spite of surprisingly strong support in front & behind the camera), but not without interest mixing Irving Berlin/Ethel Merman’s CALL ME MADAM (Washington socialite finds love on assignment) with Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy’s PAT AND MIKE/’52.* They even hired William Ching from PAT AND MIKE to repeat as ‘third wheel.’ The main switch is that while Hepburn ran away from fiancé Ching when she accidentally finds stocky true mate Tracy; Roz is running after fiancé Ching (all the way to Paris by joining the army?) when she reunites with stocky ex Paul Douglas. The film opens quite promisingly as Russell’s Washington soiree is crashed by Douglas, come to retrieve his dog and some personal items. Well played, funny & neatly paced by comedy vet Norman Z. McLeod, it only sets us up for disappointment at the coarse, pushy routines that follow. (We never do get to Paris.) Even worse with ditzy comic Marie Wilson running a parallel path to Russell by also joining the army to get away from her problems. Wilson went on to bring the popular MY FRIEND IRMA to tv; Russell hit the jackpot with AUNTIE MAME on stage and as the top grossing pic of 1958.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hard to believe, but Russell, Hepburn and Paul Douglas all born 1907.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned, PAT AND MIKE; CALL ME MADAM. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/call-me-madam-1953.html
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