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Plot:
- by Zoë
Shaw
Dick finds himself
squiring a love-sick teenager, Susan, in order to avoid a tougher sentence.
He finds himself doing things that really don't suit his age. Eventually, he
gets together with her elder sister, Margaret.
Review:
- by Jen Parmeter
Right from the beginning of the film, we know that Cary's
character, Richard Nugent, is full of both trouble and charm. Brought into Judge Margaret
Turner's (Myrna Loy) courtroom after a fight broke out over a discussion of him by two
women at a restaurant, he nearly sweeps the judge of her feet. Later while doing a speech
about art at a local high school, an impressionable teenager named Susan Turner (the
judge's younger sister) becomes smitten with him. She sneaks into his apartment wanting to
pose as a model for him. This lands Cary in jail when the judge comes to get her, with the
police in tow. The judge orders Cary to become Susan's beau until her crush has ended.
With no alternative, he reluctantly agrees. He tries everything to break Susan's crush
including trying to get her back with her old boyfriend and acting like a goofy teenager
himself, all of which result in the opposite effect.
This film is a very good family comedy of the 40's. As with
any of Cary's comedies he adds a degree of almost silliness to the film. The most
hilarious scenes including the "I know a man, what man" joke that goes back and
forth between Cary and his unfortunate victims, the knight in shining armor, and the
hysterical races and obstacle courses at the town picnic . There is a bit of romance in
the film as well. As the film progresses he develops feelings for Margaret and his
flirtations become genuine by the end of the film.
VARIETY
Film Review - June 4, 1947
- by "Brog"
- submitted by Barry Martin
"The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" is
broad farce slated for strong reception as summer film fare.
It will brighten hot weather boxoffices in all situations.
Fun is slickly projected to keep entertainment light and
fast, and cast troupes it to the hilt.
Names of Cary Grant, Myrna Ly and Shirley Temple are sturdy
lures and other values are equally strong.
Comedy aims are firmly backed
by Dore Shary's production and the broad directorial treatment by
Irving Reis. Punchy
dialog and situations grab sock laughs and it's all done with deft
timing that further glosses farce mood.
Solid script by Sidney Sheldon
poses a plot easily adapted to fluffy situations.
Tossed together are a lady judge, a playboy artist, and an
impressionable teenager. Grant,
the artist, has already had a brush with the judge, Myrna Loy, so
when the judge's kid sister, Shirley Temple, is found in the
artist's apartment late at night, he's in plenty of trouble.
Court psychiatrist proposes that, rather than make Grant a
martyr in Miss Temple's eyes, he be assigned to escort her around
until she gets over her crush.
Chuckles get heartier and
heartier as adult Grant plays at being a juvenile at basketball
games, school picnics, etc. It's
done with slapstick touch that pays off.
Romance switch with Miss Loy going for Grant and winning
him in the finale is an obvious development but well done.
Starring trio wrap up
assignments in firstrate fashion, pleasing mightily.
Not to be discounted for comedy playing is Rudy Vallee as
an assistant d.a. who has his romantic eye on the judge also.
Ray Collins (as the psychiatrist), Harry Davenport, Johnny
Sands, Miss Temple's juve boy friend.
Don Beddoe, Lillian Randolph, Veda Ann Borg and others hold
up their end of the fun capably.
Production dress is strong.
Lensing by Robert de Grasse and Nicholas Musuraca, art
direction and set decorations, editing, background music and other
actors lend able backing.
Review:
- by Kathy Fox
This is Cary
Grant's 50th movie and his second with Myrna Loy, and the only
time he will be directed by Irving Reis. THE BACHELOR AND
THE BOBBY-SOXER, is an interesting movie, which won an Oscar for
Best Screenplay for Sidney Sheldon. Grant plays Richard
Nugent, a gentleman painter, who gets caught up in a public
disturbance in a nightclub, and appears before Judge Margaret
Turner, played by Myrna Loy. His case is dismissed because of lack
of evidence. That day Mr. Nugent appears at the local high
school where Ms. Turner's sister, Susan, played by Shirley
Temple, goes to school and Susan immediately, develops a crush on
Nugent, her knight in shining armor. Susan goes to Nugent's
apartment under the pretext of getting her portrait painted, and
Margaret comes to her rescue, but hits the assistant district
attorney and is put in jail. It is decided by Susan's uncle,
a psychologist, that in order for Susan to get over Nugent and
have his sentence reduced, that he should make a play for Susan.
It all comes off so incredibly easy, and in turn Margaret and
Richard become attracted to one another. Cary is at his best
in playing Richard Nugent and the review from THE NEW YORK TIMES,
dated July 25, 1947, states, "The performance of Cary Grant .
. . is one of the brightest and sharpest of his many light comedy
jobs. Being perhaps the most accomplished looker-askance in
films, not to mention fumer and frowner, Mr. Grant has his
opportunities here." Cary, "You remind me of a
man."
NEW YORK TIMES
Film Review - July 25, 1947
- by Bosley Crowther
- submitted by Barry Martin
We wouldn't be able to tell you whether Sidney Sheldon, the fellow
who wrote "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," which came
to the Music Hall yesterday, has suffered personal harassment at
the hands of modern youth. But whether he has or hasn't, he
certainly understands that dreadful fate. And, furthermore, he
knows how to make it seem delightfully bewildering on the screen -
which may not be wholly consistent but which makes for most
agreeable film fare.
For, in "The Bachelor and the
Bobby-Soxer," Mr. Sheldon has caught the wry frenzy of a gay,
debonair, indifferent and slightly naughty man-about-town who
suddenly finds himself the victim of a fanciful high-school girl's
crush - than which no other attachment of a female is more
profound. And he has also invented a hilarious sequence of events
by which the baffled hero must submit to the willful child's
designs. As a consequence - and while the swoony fever is upon the
bashless tot- this poor, victimized bystander is taken for a most
amazing ride.
Detailed descriptions are annoying, so we're not going to mar your
fun with a windy report on how the bachelor is snagged in the
bobby-soxer's snare, how he is innocently compromised by a new
twist on the old Army game, how he is made to romp with the
kiddies and how he finally gets out of it. (The bobby-soxer has an
older sister who is a judge; we will tell you that much.) Neither
will we go into spasms over the events at a high-school picnic and
the gall of the younger generation. We will let you go into them
yourself.
But we must tell you that the
performance of Cary Grant as the gentleman involved is one of the
brightest and sharpest of his many light-comedy jobs. Being
perhaps the most accomplished looker-askance in films, not to
mention fumer and frowner, Mr. Grant has his opportunities here.
And so, too, does Shirley Temple have a full chance to show her
natural charm as a clear-eyed, imaginative, persistent and
overpowering 17-year-old. Myrna Loy is like-wise attractive as the
solemn but flexible judge and Rudy Vallee is remarkably comic as a
humorless suitor for her hand.
And we also must tell you that the
texture of Mr. Sheldon's farce is firm and uncloyed with cuteness,
which is just the way it should be, and that Irving Reis'
direction has kept it in that solid shape. In fact, it is all
reminiscent of some of those gay, galvanic larks that Gregory
LaCava ad Leo McCarey used to make ten or more years ago. And a
higher recommendation we can't give to a light summer show.
Review
Click here to read
Susanna's review of "The
Bachelor & the Bobby-Soxer"
Review
Click here to read Jenny's Crackpot
Reviews at the Cary Grant Shrine
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