The Movies ... and the People Who Make Them (1939)

"The MOVIES • • • • 1939" love affairs that each may marry the right man with amusing and ultimately successful results. (Adults SC Young People) Those multitudinous patrons who enjoyed Deanna Durbin’s previous pictures, need have no fear that she herself and producer Joe Pasternak, who was in command of them all, have made any attempt to justify the advertising insistence that she is appearing in her “first glamorous role." Deanna is still the very antithesis of a glamor girl, fresh and captivating and delightfully adolescent. She is growing up and her acting is becoming more sure, more artful. Three Smart Girls Grow Up shrewdly makes less use of her as an astonishing vocal star and more as a genuine human being. But it does not push her into personal romantics or attempt an aura of glamor. She retains all of her engaging and innocent charm. She is still nice in the nicest sense of the word. These Three Smart Girls are Joan and Kay Craig and young sister Penny who has just achieved the dignity of a comingout party. Sister Joan uses the occasion to become engaged to Richard Watkins and thereby poses a problem for Penny. Her parents consider the engagement most satisfactory, a social triumph — but Penny discovers that sister Kay is also in love with Richard. She goes to her father, but he is too busy juggling market quotations to pay attention to her prattle. Butler Binns overhears and offers a suggestion: sister Kay, he says, will forget about Richard as soon as she meets another young man, preferably one tall, dark and handsome. So Penny brings home to dinner precisely such a young man, Harry Loren, a poor music student she meets at the conservatory. Alas, Harry is more interested in Joan and she in turn displays interest in him — and Penny is so furious at this split in her plans that her family is convinced she herself is in love with Harry. It’s a desperate situation that demands desperate measures and Penny is blocked in her reshuffling efforts until at she breaks through her father’s business shell and makes him see that his family is at least as important as his investments. H is absent-mindedness proves an asset — and Penny can sing happily as her sisters marry the right man. It is Deanna, aided by brilliant direction and a completely persuasive production, who sets the mood of the film and maintains it throughout. Nan Grey, who was one of the original three, and Helen Parrish are beautifully appropriate as her sisters, playing with a nice balance of adult emotion and skittish girlishness. Richar Watkins is a collar-ad figure as the disputed Richard, and Robert Cummings is a surprisingly adept romantic comedian as music student Harry. Charles Winninger caricatures the father with amiable skill. Deanna's songs, neatly worked into the story, range from “'The Last Rose of Summer” and “Invitation to the Dance" to a new one titled “Because.” They furnish enchanting interludes and do not interrupt the flow of the film. EVERYBODY’S BABY: Produced and distributed by 20th Century-Fox. Director: Malcolm St. Clair Screenplay: Karen DeWolf, Robert Chapin, Frances Hyland, Albert Ray Story: Hilda Stone, Betty Reinhardt (Based on characters created by Katharine Kavanaugh) Photography: Edward Snyder Art Directors: Bernard Herzbrun, Boris Leven Music Director: Samuel Kaylin Editor: Norman Colbert John Jones Jed Prouty Bonnie Thompson Shirley Deane Mrs. John Jones Spring Byington Herbert Thompson Russell Gleason Jack Jones Ken Howell Roger Jones George Ernest Lucy Jones June Carlson Granny Jones Florence Roberts Bobby Jones Billy Mahan Dr. Pillcoff Reginald Denny Dick Lane Robert Allen Nurse Crodell Claire DuBrey Tommy McGuire Marvin Stephens Hattie Hattie McDaniel Chief Kelly Arthur Loft Dr. Jenkins Howard Hickman The Jones family, pepped up by a new member, providing as much fun as they ever have in a genial domestic comedy about the collision between family ideas and a quack doctor’s notion of baby treatment. (Adults 8C Young People) All of them, from Granny down the list to Bobby and Lucy, are in a dither over the expected addition to the family. It won’t be a Jones in name — Bonnie became Mrs. Thompson a film or two ago — but they know it will be a Jones in genius. There they are, Granny, father and mother Jones and expectant father Herbert, waiting in the Maryville hospital, when a nurse announces it’s a girl. Father Jones, who has barely lasted this long, collapses in a faint and husband Herbert goes in to see the baby. Then comes the start of the storm: a Dr. Pillcoff is in charge and refuses to let him see his daughter. When the Joneses, marching en masse, come later to inspect the addition, they are kept at a distance by a snippy nurse — a Dr. Pillcoff importation — who makes them wear masks and gowns and take only furtive peeks at the baby. Herbert picks up his daughter through a window and brings on a kidnapping scare and stern orders not to touch his child again. After weeks of such treatment, Herbert attempts a revolt. He or the nurse must go, says he. The nurse stays. Herbert, however, is not alone in misery. Other husbands have the same complaint. Inspired by Granny, they concoct a scheme to expose Pillcoff as a fraud and the exposure provides an hilarious climax to the hectic tale. All the familiar faces are still in the cast, each simply carrying forward the performance established in previous pictures. Since Dr. Pillcoff is Reginald Denny, he is an able addition to the comedy. Likable and sprightly and, though played primarily for laughs, heartily human in tone, Everybody’s Baby suggests that a new member has given the Jones family new life. 249