User Reviews

This film is a rich one. Cary Grant is a charming artist who is always finding himself pulled into court by trouble he never intended to cause. Trouble finds Grant everywhere, because he is a magnet to women, and men get jealous. He is brought to court for just such an occurrence, and low and behold the judge is Myrna Loy. She is a no nonsense judge, but she allows Grant's lawyer (Dan Tobin) to convince her to let him off with a lecture.

However, soon after, Grant delivers a lecture on the pleasures of a career in art to the local high school. Unfortunately he attracts the attention of high school senior Shirley Temple. Temple manages to go to Grant's apartment and get inside - she feels they are made for each other. But she falls asleep, and Grant returns home without noticing her. He gets into his pajamas and dressing gown and makes himself a drink, planning to read a book before bed. He puts on the music, waking up Temple. She says hello to him while he looks totally confused - and then there is pounding at his door. It is the police, the D.A. (Rudy Vallee) and Temple's sister...yes Myrna Loy.

Grant is arrested on a very sticky charge - we are never informed precisely, but it appears to be attempted statutory rape. However, Loy is convinced by her uncle Ray Collins, to be easy on Grant - if she isn't, Temple will always think of Grant as a martyr. Grant has to help Temple get him out of her system. So Grant is given a suspended sentence if he cooperates (which he really hates doing).

The story is very odd in it's reversals of character. Loy never played such a high ranking professional before, nor had Grant played an artist of any type. Temple, the darling little girl of the 1930s, was now grown up, and here comes closest to playing a really bratty character: so spoiled that she does not care about how her actions affect Loy, Grant, Vallee, and her boyfriend from high school (Johnny Sands).

Possibly the most curious change in character is Vallee. He became something of a fixture in films in the 1940s, usually with Preston Sturgis like in THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK or THE PALM BEACH STORY, or in films like I REMEMBER MAMA. His character were somewhat pompous but basically harmless. Here he is (due to growing jealousy, but initially due to disgust) in his most unlikeable character. After Grant is released, he meets Vallee in front of Loy and Temple's house. Vallee, sneeringly says, "Why don't you come to my home for my niece's birthday party? You'd like her...she's six!!" Grant, understandably, looks like he wants to flatten the crooner. Later on he steals a chair in a restaurant from a patron who was using it (causing the patron to fall down). The patron confronts him, but Vallee won't even consider apologizing. So the patron evens the score a second later.

In this comedy you discover all about the man with a power (what power - Hoodoo! You'll catch on). You will see veteran nice old grandpa Harry Davenport show a less likable side to his nature, taking out his anger on defenseless chessmen. You will enjoy this quirky comedy, and be glad you saw it.

I own a VHS copy of this film and have watched it several times and it never ceases to be delightful. Some of the other reviews are no doubt hampered by being the result of a single viewing or not paying attention. For example, at least two identify Shirey Temple's character as a college student rather than a high schooler.

To understand the interpersonal dynamics of the story, let's start with two of the great supporting actors in this film Rudy Vallee and Ray Collins. Collins plays a psychiatrist who does consulting work for the criminal justice system and who wants to see his niece, a police court judge played by Myrna Loy, married. Vallee plays an assistant district attorney (ADA) who is romantically interested in Loy's character but is frustrated by her lack of interest and Collins' overt hostility. Between her career and caring for her teenage sister played by Temple, Loy is content to spar with Vallee but keeps him at arms length.

For those who are having trouble with the "lady judge" in the 1940s angle - there were a few especially as lots of young male lawyers had gone off to the war and left opportunities for women in legal careers as in other fields, Loy plays a minor court judge, and she has relatives in the system (the aforementioned uncle and another who seems to be a retired judge). One also needs to know the times to understand that "bobby-soxer" refers to young girls wearing sox with the tops turned down ("bobbed" which means shortened). Another historical note - at least one reviewer has mentioned that there is a hint of pedophilia in the relationship between the characters played by Temple and Grant (mild by comparison to The Major And The Minor with Ray Milland and Ginger Rogers pretending to be 12). This is a somewhat anachronistic view as the trend has been toward raising the legal age of consent and the age for marriage in the two generations that separate us from the time this film was made. The idea of the high school girl and the playboy artist dating or marrying would have been a bit scandalous in a middle class milieu like this, but it would not necessarily have seemed criminal to most folks.

So now we come to the silly schoolgirl crush which Shirley Temple's character conceives with regard to the urbane, sophisticated, handsome, and slightly rakish artist played by Cary Grant. This is a stock element of many romantic comedies. In fact, there is an interesting parallel between Shirley daydreaming that Cary Grant is a knight in shining armor and the romantic reveries of Reese Witherspoon's character in The Importance of Being Earnest. Our teen heroine in this movie is a bit of what we would now call a "drama queen." We see this not only in her relation to the older artist, but in the way she returns to her high school beau talking about how handsome he will be in uniform (he just got his draft notice).

When our psychiatrist uncle (Collins) comes up with the idea of having the artist (Grant) pay court to the bobby-soxer (Temple) till she tires of him, he is playing a double - even a triple - game. He wants to put what he considers a real man (Grant) in close proximity to the judge (Loy) and he wants to irritate the assistant district attorney (Vallee) whom he expects will suffer by the comparison.

The artist accepts his unusual form of probation reluctantly and soon begins to see another, and more desirable, side of the judge but each time they begin to get close something intrudes to keep them from acknowledging their feelings. Meanwhile, the artist craftily cultivates the friendship of the ex-boyfriend to keep him in our bobby-soxer's company.

The scene at the community picnic where the artist and the ADA compete (sack races and such) for ribbons, and the attention of the judge, is hilarious, especially as our bobby-soxer bribes the high school boys to help her artist to beat the ADA. And the later scene in the nightclub is also a real winner.

The chemistry between Grant and Loy here is not the greatest, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is much better in that department, but they give a good account of themselves as reluctant lovers. Loy was always fabulous as the straight partner for a physical comic actor which she perfected in over a dozen pairings with William Powell (I Love You Again, Love Crazy, the Thin Man series, etc.). Through most of this film Grant has little scope for his physical comedy (especially as compared to Bringing Up Baby or Monkey Business) which is why the picnic sequence really shines, but his facial expressions and voice make the most of the limited possibilities, especially in the nightclub scene where there is a lot going on in a small space and Cary Grant still shines.

This movie is a bit dated, and I don't think you could make it today with the same charm and innocence. But it is a joy to watch on its own terms and I highly recommend it.

Copyright 24 July 1947 by RKO Radio Pic¬tures Inc. Released: 1 September 1947 (U.S.A.). New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 24 July 1947. U.K. release: December 1947. Australian release: 24 December 1947. 8,706 feet. 96½ minutes.

U.K. release title: Bachelor Knight.

SYNOPSIS: Teenager falls in love with an older man who is forced to pretend that he returns her affections.

NOTES: This somewhat forced little comedy received such a remarkable string of lauda¬tory reviews (from some of the sourest crit¬ics in the business too!) that a nomination for Best Original Screenplay was inevitable. That it won over such competition as Polonsky's Body and Soul, the Kanins' A Double Life, Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux and Amidei, Franci, Viola and Zavattini's Shoe-Shine is even more astonishing. But that award (and it was the only nomination for an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award he ever received in his Hollywood sojourn) certainly set Sidney Sheldon on the path to bestseller fame and fortune.

Domestic rental gross: an amazing $5,550,000.

This is the film that introduced the famous routine: "You remind me of a man!" - "What man?" - "Man with the power!" - "What power?" - "Power of hoodoo!" - "Hoodoo?" - "You do!" - "Do what?" - "Remind me of a man!" - "What man?" - "Man with the power!"

COMMENT: A very agreeably played comedy. The script is moderately amusing, the direction capable, if undistinguished, and production values are well up to "A" standard.

Of course a lot of the humor at the expense of teenage fashion and mores is now rather dated but those of us with a sense of nostalgia will find that a bonus to the fun. Whether the film will be appreci¬ated - or even understood - by today's drive-in kids is entirely another matter.

Certainly the producer has gathered a delightfully persuasive roster of players - star, character and minor - including some of our top favorites like Rudy Vallee, Ray Collins, Harry Davenport, Charles Halton, Veda Ann Borg and Dan Tobin. The three stars are happily cast, with Myrna Loy moving gracefully into comedy after the rigors of The Best Years of Our Lives.

In this film, Shirley Temple is cast as Myrna Loy's younger teenage sister, and her responsibility since the death of their parents. Myrna Loy plays a judge and she first encounters Cary Grant, who plays a famous artist, when she has set him free after he was charged with assault and battery. He then ends up at Shirley's high school giving a lecture course, and the teenage girl becomes ( unknown to him ) very infatuated with the very handsome artist. When Loy finds out she sentences Grant to keep company with her sister until her crush for him is over. Grant and Loy eventually fall in love with each other and Shirley realizes the middle-aged Grant is more suited for her sister than for her. This 'fun and simple' comedy sounds easy, but the picture got off to a miserable start. Myrna Loy soon discovered playing Shirley Temple's older sister wasn't easy because she had to treat her rather severely on the screen. According to Loy, " You had to be careful in pictures about being to hard on dogs, children and Shirley Temple; otherwise you could really alienate audiences. Cary Grant did not like working with the younger director Irving Reis, and finally one day Grant stormed out in a huff. He went directly to producer Dore Schary and threatened to quit unless Reis was fired. Buckling to the pressure, Schary replaced Reis with himself. Temple takes her first screen drink in The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer, and the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union protested that Shirley Temple would be doing a disservice to American youth if she drank on screen, on the the grounds she might lure unthinking teenagers to do the same thing. The studio vigorously denied that Shirley actually drank in the film, only takes a sip, makes a face and spurns the cocktail and the WCTU should be satisfied that Shirley spits out the drink. The behind the scenes adventures sound just as comical as the movie itself. Clearly this film survives because of Cary Grant's charm and meticulous sense of comedic timing along with the renewed box-office magic of a beautiful teenage Shirley Temple. Still a delightful comedy and an interesting look back to the 1940s.

It's 1947 and Cary Grant is an artist with a notorious reputation for misbehavior, mostly undeserved. See, he's really a perfect bourgeois, lives in an orderly apartment serviced by a private elevator, dresses in suits and ties, speaks flawlessly before student bodies, and has the morals of a teacher in a parochial school. It's just that his work -- painting, of which we see no evidence whatever -- takes him sometimes into low places.

In any case, the high-schoolish Shirley Temple, a bobby soxer, sees him speaking to her class and develops an intense crush on her "knight in shining armor." Kids: the bobby soxers were so named because the girls of the period wore white ankle socks with the tops folded down. They all worshiped Frank Sinatra and danced jitterbugs and -- well, you get the idea.

Temple wangles her way into Grant's apartment one night when it's empty, without his knowledge. Later, he returns, doesn't see her dozing on the couch, gets comfortable with his robe, a drink, and a book, sits in an easy chair -- and Shirley Temple wakes up and says hello at the same time the door bursts open and the Assistant District Attorney, Rudy Valley, and some police officers barge in.

He winds up in front of the judge, who happens to be Temple's older sister and legal guardian, Myrna Loy. Anyone must understand Loy's perturbation. After all, Temple is only seventeen, while Grant is pushing forty. But she's a wise judge and, sensing the truth, sentences Grant to an indefinite period of squiring Temple around to high school hangouts, until her infatuation wears off.

It has its amusing moments. One is when Grant is first seized in his flat, wearing his robe, with a drink in his hand, staring dumbfounded alternately at the door and at Temple stretched out on the couch. Nobody is better at this kind of thing.

Other amusing moments follow as Grant decides to overplay his role as a teen age escort. He folds up his hat brim, rolls up the bottom of his trousers, loses the tie, and adopts the mannerisms of the kids he's being forced to hang with. "Mellow greetings, Yukey Dukey." At the town picnic, he enters several contests -- the three-legged race, the obstacle course, and so on -- and is beaten by the gloating Assistant District Attorney each time except for the final race, which is rigged so that Grant wins the Grand Prize. Grant is like a child, with his bronze cup. He fawns over it. By himself, he practices being modest when others compliment him on his shiny new cup. He does it all in mime too. What a performer.

The story runs completely out of steam during the climactic dinner scene. People shout and argue across the restaurant table while a band keeps interrupting to play Happy Birthday. It's the kind of forced pace that writers use when they've run out of ideas. Too bad, because what preceded it was sometimes pretty funny.

In the end, Temple returns to her puppyishly loyal boyfriend and Grant steals Myrna Loy from the Assistant District Attorney. Everyone winds up happy except the Assistant District Attorney. Well, maybe he's married to his job after all. He's certainly been earnest enough.

For me, "The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer" would have been a far more fun and entertaining movie to watch had its storyline focused in on giving the viewer a closer look at the teen angle in all of the "screwball" shenanigans.

I found that when the action was taking place at Sunset High, amongst all the teens, that's when my interest in this truly convoluted romance (pitting 2 sisters against each other) began to pick up significantly.

If you ask me, I'd say that the action-packed basketball game that took place between Sunset High and their fierce rivals was the absolute highlight of this film.

Anyway - After watching this vintage picture, I certainly wish that Hollywood had actually made more teen-oriented films from that era. 'Cause, believe me - The dramas that transpired between that age group definitely showed about 10x more entertainment potential than did the dry, stale and predictable nonsense that went on between all of the bickering adults.