Janie is a pleasant family comedy that had its origins as a successful play on Broadway running 642 performances during the 1942-44 seasons on Broadway. Warner Brothers bought the film rights and brought the film to the movie-going public the same year the play closed on Broadway. It certainly reflects more innocent times.
Young Janie is your typical teen of the times, having romantic thoughts mostly instigated by the fact there is an army camp just been built in her sleepy little Midwest town of Hortonville. All those soldiers around may excite her, but for her father Edward Arnold town newspaper publisher and former doughboy from the last war who remembers what soldiers are like, they're oversexed and over here and the sooner we get them off to war the easier he'll feel.
Janie played by Joyce Reynolds gets the idea to have an intimate gathering for her girl friends and their soldier dates at home and gets Arnold and her mother Ann Harding out for the evening. But her civilian high school sweetheart Richard Erdman gets on the horn and pretty soon Janie's got a regular USO going at her house for the evening. Worst of all her own soldier beau Robert Hutton is stuck on a bus with her little sister Clare Foley. Hutton by the way looks like a pale imitation of Jimmy Stewart.
Janie got an Oscar nomination for Editing, but the highlight of the film for me is the lone musical number Keep Your Powder Dry performed in Busby Berkley style by the partygoers which include the Williams Brothers Quartet with that youngest Williams brother Andy who had a solo career of sorts, future head Mouseketeer Jimmy Dodd, and even Hattie McDaniel who is Arnold's and Harding's maid. As usual Hattie gets some devastating lines.
Although the mores of the times have changed and Janie has a most old fashioned look, I hope someone put a print of this film in a time capsule. The vacuum will keep it pristine and some folks in the future will have an idea of the American home front in 1944.
Young Janie is your typical teen of the times, having romantic thoughts mostly instigated by the fact there is an army camp just been built in her sleepy little Midwest town of Hortonville. All those soldiers around may excite her, but for her father Edward Arnold town newspaper publisher and former doughboy from the last war who remembers what soldiers are like, they're oversexed and over here and the sooner we get them off to war the easier he'll feel.
Janie played by Joyce Reynolds gets the idea to have an intimate gathering for her girl friends and their soldier dates at home and gets Arnold and her mother Ann Harding out for the evening. But her civilian high school sweetheart Richard Erdman gets on the horn and pretty soon Janie's got a regular USO going at her house for the evening. Worst of all her own soldier beau Robert Hutton is stuck on a bus with her little sister Clare Foley. Hutton by the way looks like a pale imitation of Jimmy Stewart.
Janie got an Oscar nomination for Editing, but the highlight of the film for me is the lone musical number Keep Your Powder Dry performed in Busby Berkley style by the partygoers which include the Williams Brothers Quartet with that youngest Williams brother Andy who had a solo career of sorts, future head Mouseketeer Jimmy Dodd, and even Hattie McDaniel who is Arnold's and Harding's maid. As usual Hattie gets some devastating lines.
Although the mores of the times have changed and Janie has a most old fashioned look, I hope someone put a print of this film in a time capsule. The vacuum will keep it pristine and some folks in the future will have an idea of the American home front in 1944.