There's a stereotype that women teachers or librarians who wear glasses are plain Jane's, and the moment Miss four eyes becomes mademoiselle two eyes, she's a raving beauty. Shirley Jones in "The Music Man", Joan Davis in "She Wrote the Book" and Joan Caulfield in "The Petty Girl" are just a few examples of this, and now comes along Maureen O'Hara whom nobody would accused of being a plain Jane. All she needs to awaken her is the music of Harry James, and she turns into a famous New York fashion model reeling in a bunch of available men, forgetting to tell them that she's really a staid college music professor in New York searching for the perfect classical music orchestras to be entered into an upcoming competition.
The main man here is Dick Haymes, a decent singer but only serviceable as a leading man. Fortunately, he had costars like Betty Grable and O'Hara here to make him presentable, and while he was extremely popular in the 1940's, he doesn't stand the test of time like Frank Sinatra does. Haymes gets the bulk of the songs, coming alive in the segment when he sings the decent title song to O'Hara in Central Park, a song which turns into an extremely energetic production number joined by the romantic youth dancing through the park. But the story is just ridiculous, overfilled with clichés overly used in movie musicals of the 1940's and '50s. O'Hara is completely charming and comes out unscathed, and Reginald Gardiner is his normally delightfully droll self as usual. So in answer to the film's question title, Maureen: yes. The film: no.
The main man here is Dick Haymes, a decent singer but only serviceable as a leading man. Fortunately, he had costars like Betty Grable and O'Hara here to make him presentable, and while he was extremely popular in the 1940's, he doesn't stand the test of time like Frank Sinatra does. Haymes gets the bulk of the songs, coming alive in the segment when he sings the decent title song to O'Hara in Central Park, a song which turns into an extremely energetic production number joined by the romantic youth dancing through the park. But the story is just ridiculous, overfilled with clichés overly used in movie musicals of the 1940's and '50s. O'Hara is completely charming and comes out unscathed, and Reginald Gardiner is his normally delightfully droll self as usual. So in answer to the film's question title, Maureen: yes. The film: no.