Producer: Alex Gottlieb. Copyright 2 September 1944 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. A Warner Bros.-First National picture. New York opening at the Strand: 4 August 1944. U.S. release: 25 July 1944. U.K. release: 22 February 1945. Australian release: 28 February 1946. Running times: 106 minutes (US); 95 minutes (Aust).
NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Henry Miller on 10 September 1942 and ran a remarkable 642 performances. Gwen Anderson, Howard St John and Linda Watkins starred. Antoinette Perry directed. Incredibly, Owen Marks was nominated for an Oscar for Best Film Editing, losing to Barbara McLean's Wilson. Sequel: Janie Gets Married.
COMMENT: Janie is every bit as bad as the players, synopsis of the story and a contemporary New York Times review by Bosley Crowther led us to expect. Its only redeeming promise lay in the movie credits, but regrettably these gentlemen all let us down. The film is very sloppily and often atrociously edited and Mike Curtiz lets his players run riot. Admittedly the script is very weak, but no amount of excess fulminating by Ed Arnold could improve it.
Miss Reynolds makes Janie a precocious twit and Robert Hutton is a dill. Richard Erdman does what he can with the painfully ridiculous role of Scooper. Robert Benchley glides through the motions of his role with customary hand-out-for-his-weekly-pay-check aplomb. As far as production values are concerned, it's little more than a photographed stage play with a few crowd scenes thrown in.
NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Henry Miller on 10 September 1942 and ran a remarkable 642 performances. Gwen Anderson, Howard St John and Linda Watkins starred. Antoinette Perry directed. Incredibly, Owen Marks was nominated for an Oscar for Best Film Editing, losing to Barbara McLean's Wilson. Sequel: Janie Gets Married.
COMMENT: Janie is every bit as bad as the players, synopsis of the story and a contemporary New York Times review by Bosley Crowther led us to expect. Its only redeeming promise lay in the movie credits, but regrettably these gentlemen all let us down. The film is very sloppily and often atrociously edited and Mike Curtiz lets his players run riot. Admittedly the script is very weak, but no amount of excess fulminating by Ed Arnold could improve it.
Miss Reynolds makes Janie a precocious twit and Robert Hutton is a dill. Richard Erdman does what he can with the painfully ridiculous role of Scooper. Robert Benchley glides through the motions of his role with customary hand-out-for-his-weekly-pay-check aplomb. As far as production values are concerned, it's little more than a photographed stage play with a few crowd scenes thrown in.