SUNDAY DINNER FOR A SOLDIER (1944)

The title’s a treacly turnoff, but this WWII home-front booster is a legit charmer, give or take a few missteps & overplaying.  And, in its last act, magically tender.  We’re by the Florida Keys, where grown-up sister Anne Baxter lives in a disheveled house boat with three much younger siblings.  Orphaned and just getting by, no thanks to irresponsible (or is it irrepressible?) Grandpa Charles Winninger, they’re all pitching in to make next week’s host-a-soldier for Sunday Dinner happen.  A matter of civic pride with the Army Air Force base just down the coast, they’ve signed up to host one of the flyover boys, but need a chicken for the traditional dinner.  And the only one on hand is like a pet to little sister.  (Chicken relatively expensive at the time, 53¢/lb.)  Expected domestic obstacles and a shortage of cash run the narrative, making that marriage proposal from a boring ‘butter-and-egg’ man to Baxter hard to put off.  Might our guest soldier-boy alter things?  Director Lloyd Bacon, known for helming the straight parts of Busby Berkeley musicals @ Warners, did some of his best work after moving to 20th/Fox.  (Who doesn’t like IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING/’49?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/it-happens-every-spring-1949.html)  And here, he gets fine location atmosphere (CA subbing for FL) when allowed, and a beautifully stylized l soundstage set for the main coast-side action.  Bacon not the sort of director to integrate the two, but the studio mock-up grows on you.  But what makes this so affecting happens when Sgt. John Hodiak, on his last day of furlough, shows up on the beach and literally walks into the picture, a serendipitous replacement for the expected dinner guest.  What follows is about as lovely a wartime romance as Hollywood put on screen at the time.  Nice is underrated.  Nice is hard!  And finding your perfect match without drowning in sentiment a rare and lovely thing to watch.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL:  *Bacon perhaps sensing something special between Baxter & Hodiak who married two years later.  BTW - quite a year for underused/undervalued Hodiak who also made his best remembered film this year, Alfred Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT/’44.