PRACTICALLY YOURS was the fifth of seven collaborations for Claudette Colbert and frequent leading man Fred MacMurray. It was the last one they made together at Paramount; subsequent pairings were at Universal. Perhaps more importantly, this was Miss Colbert's final film at Paramount Pictures, where she'd been under contract since 1929 and had appeared in 35 motion pictures...a long and successful run by anyone's standards.
Not only did Colbert make 35 films at Paramount during a 15-year period, she appeared in ten loan outs. She averaged three films per year, nearly all of them hits. When she left Paramount in 1945, she freelanced at Universal, RKO, MGM and 20th Century Fox. She never played supporting roles in any of these productions. She didn't have children, so without maternity leaves and without any breaks during the war years, she remained a busy and influential Hollywood star for several decades.
Because PRACTICALLY YOURS is Colbert's swan song at her home studio, it's a film worth examining. Contemporary critic James Agee was a huge fan of this unusual wartime love story. Like THE BRIDE CAME HOME, it's somewhat experimental. Not only are the leads older than the typical twenty-somethings we might find in this type of situation, scenes contain absurd humor that is meant to keep us on our toes.
Indeed, much of it seems designed to have us consider the absurdity of war and how people soldier on at home and abroad during times of international uncertainty. It's a subversive tale wrapped up in a wholesome Colbert-MacMurray package.
Particularly cheeky is the sardonic view that romance has gone to the dogs. Colbert's character is mistaken for the canine companion of a heroic pilot (MacMurray). Their names are similar, and he calls out her name while crashing into a Japanese ship. Everyone back home thinks he's dead at first. When he turns out to be very much alive a short time later, he is reunited with his beloved Peggy who functions as a stand-in for his beloved Piggy. It's absurd, right? Even a name like Piggy for a dog is absurd.
Meanwhile, there is another fellow at the company where Colbert works who is called Beagell (Gil Lamb). Obviously, the name is a play on the word beagle. Colbert becomes "engaged" to that mutt, when she and MacMurray don't seem to hit it off and she needs a convenient out.
Colbert underplays her role with a cool detachment. She and MacMurray have been thrown together by happenstance and a series of coincidences. A lovely sequence in which they provide comfort to a recent war widow (Rosemary DeCamp) in a time of grief, underscores how real the relationship can be if they work as a unit, not apart at cross-purposes.
MacMurray is a bit more subdued than usual. However, he is still playing another testosterone-fueled jerk, the kind of role that Paramount often assigned to him. His character reflects the male chauvinism of the era. He's most effective, though, when he is allowed to be tender with his pooch Piggy, which is later repeated with Peggy.
I'm a fan of the character actors that appear in so many of these classic Paramount pictures. Here we have Cecil Kellaway as the benevolent employer, who offers our two main characters a place to stay while dealing with a media blitz and tremendous public attention.
Robert Benchley is also on hand as a relative of Kellaway's. He has a very nice bedtime exchange with MacMurray about what it means to return stateside and be so highly esteemed by others.
Most wartime flicks are meant to help the audience appreciate the efforts of men who have been fighting overseas. Decades before Vietnam, this story subverts the standard trope of war hero worship. What we have is the use of romantic comedy elements in a sly anti-war film. Like Preston Sturges' HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, Mitch Leisen's PRACTICALLY YOURS makes a mockery of the veterans' homecoming.
0 out of 0 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink