Franchot Tone plays the sexually diffident David Flanner, the American Consul in Mexico City. Flanner's under pressure from his fiancée to get married, but always seems to find an excuse to wiggle out of it. When a spunky American girl Barbara Olmstead, comes to the consulate looking for her own fiancée, Flanner energetically helps her--giving him yet another plausible excuse not to deal with his own love life. Olmstead, like Flanner, is ostensibly eager to get married but is, in fact, almost as ambivalent as he is. Whenever Flanner mentions anything that has to do with sexuality to her she gives him a karate chop. In the end, of course, she and her fiancée do mange to meet up and get married but not before she's walked out on him and theatrically called the wedding off. As the film ends, Flanner is promising his fiancée yet again that they'll tie the knot. Hmm . . . it doesn't look like Flanner is the marrying kind. And as for Barbara, will she be satisfied living as a housewife in small town America after her Mexico City adventure? This postwar film shows us the problems Americans had settling down after the rough and tumble years of World War II. Not everyone was all that eager to give up their freedom.
Shirley Temple looks radiant in the film and plays the role of Barbara Olmstead with a nice comedic flair. Sad to say, this was one of her last films. She could have been a good fifties actress in the Doris Day or June Allyson mode.
Shirley Temple looks radiant in the film and plays the role of Barbara Olmstead with a nice comedic flair. Sad to say, this was one of her last films. She could have been a good fifties actress in the Doris Day or June Allyson mode.