The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

. . . it's best NOT to spell out the word for an article of clothing that's bound to be a short-lived fad. Who's going to stream COLLEGE CRAVATS? On the other hand, SCHOOL TIES still sounds like an intriguing possibility. THE BROWN PENNY LOAFERS is WAY too specific; there's an air of mystery hanging over THE RED SHOES. Doesn't THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS call out to you more than THE CULT OF ITINERANT DUNGAREES? Something simple, such as KINKY BOOTS, always will be in style. PERVERTED GALOSHES, not so much. A rose may smell as sweet by any other name, but will BUZZARD BLOOMERS pass the "sniff test" as well as THE PELICAN BRIEF? This brings us to THE BACHELOR AND THE BOBBY-SOXER. To say that this Cary Grant-Myrna Loy vehicle stinks from beginning to end may be unduly harsh. But at 19-years-old in real life here, Shirley Temple is all but stretched to her breaking point playing Loy's little sis, "Susan," who is supposed to be 17. The script for this dud is nearly as archaic and humorless as its title makes it sound. Hoop skirts, anyone?

A dashing artist (Cary Grant) makes a bad impression on judge Myrna Loy. Her younger sister (Shirley Temple) encounters him at her school, and gets a school-girl crush on him that causes him nothing but headaches. When Loy misunderstands a situation where Temple ends up in Grant's apartment, she must eat crow by asking him to pretend to date Temple in order to have her sister get over him. But with all of Grant's efforts, Shirley just won't change her mind about him. Loy's associate and boyfriend Rudy Vallee is upset to discover that Loy and Grant have gone out on a date together, and confronts them at a restaurant, along with Temple and her own on-and-off boyfriend, Johnny Sands. Behind the scenes, Loy's psychiatrist uncle Ray Collins puts two and two together, and realizes that Grant and Loy are attracted to each other. Secretly, he must despise Vallee; Who wouldn't? That character is more square than the one at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue.The whole premise made me uncomfortable once I realized that Loy was pushing Grant and Temple together in order to get Temple to forget about him. Grant is said to be 18 years older in this film than the 17 year old Temple; The truth is that he was 24 years older. Older men and younger women were OK in old Hollywood; look at "Girl's Dormitory" and "Daddy Long Legs" for example. It's believable for a teenage girl to have a crush on an older man, but not to push it so hard as to taking him to a Basketball game. That Sands would loose concentration on the basketball court watching her doesn't seem believable, either. I know how important High School sports are to young athletes, and he wouldn't miss such an easy shot or not pay attention as the star center. The truth was it was a bit gross to see Temple and Grant together.Still, I did find most of the film enjoyable; I wanted to see more of Myrna Loy together with Grant, and less of Temple. Fortunately, she gave a better performance here than in other films of the mid 40's she did; She was certainly a lot less cloying and not as pouty as normal. That gets old really fast and was one of the weaker points of "Since You Went Away", an otherwise excellent film. There's an amusing birthday song bit in the restaurant scene, and the chess game between Ray Collins and Great Uncle Harry Davenport is funny too. Sadly, I found the ending to be really way too "cute" and unsatisfying. The fact that this won Best Screenplay at the Oscars (for Sidney Sheldon) was quite a questionable choice.

"The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" is one of my favorite romance comedies starring Cary Grant as professional painter Richard Nugent (the bachelor), Myrna Loy as Judge Margaret Turner, and Shirley Temple as Margaret's much younger sister Susan (the bobby-soxer), for whom Margaret is legally responsible. One day Richard is brought to Margaret's court on a public disturbance charge that is soon dropped, and later that day he gives a lecture on art at the high school where Susan attends. The seventeen-year-old Susan instantly falls in love with this much older man and shows up uninvited at his apartment in order to pose for him, resulting in Richard innocently being hauled off to jail before he can even say a word. Things look bad for Richard until Margaret's & Susan's uncle Dr. Matt Beemish (Ray Collins), the court psychiatrist, comes up with a plan: Richard is to be (reluctantly) Susan's beau until she gets over her crush for him.My favorite scenes from "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" include the following (DO NOT read any further until after you have seen this picture). On the evening that Susan sneaks into Richard's apartment hoping to pose for him, Richard turns on his radio and hears a nice orchestration of "My Shining Hour," after which he is horrified to see Susan lying on his couch; he then hears loud bangings on his door as the next song announced on the radio is "Last Ride in a Patrol Wagon"! While sitting in jail, Richard offers a hilarious explanation (which escalates in confused anger) to his attorney (Dan Tobin). In order to win the disapproval of Margaret's & Susan's cranky great-uncle Judge Thaddeus Turner (Harry Davenport), Richard shows up at the Turner household hastily dressed like a zoot, playfully adopting the slick jive talk and fancy footwork as only Cary Grant could do so well. Later on at the picnic, Richard and assistant district attorney Tommy Chamberlain (Rudy Vallee), with whom Richard had an altercation during his aforementioned arrest, spend a very silly afternoon competing in the picnic races; Richard fails miserably until the final full-fledged obstacle course, in which Susan's spurned boyfriend Jerry (Johnny Sands) fixes it so that Richard wins. Richard and Margaret hope to spend a quiet evening together at a nightclub, but they are soon unexpectedly joined, one by one, by Susan, Jerry, Tommy, and a young couple (Don Beddoe and Vera Ann Borg) with whom Richard had the altercation that brought him to Margaret's court in the first place; without having done anything wrong, Richard becomes insulted, yelled at, splashed in the face with wine, and stuck with the check while everyone else angrily leaves Richard's table, including Margaret. And finally, back at the Turner residence, the slamming of various doors infuriates Thaddeus until he himself behaves immaturely."The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" is a wonderful comedy with an excellent cast. Nobody but Cary Grant could play the role of Richard Nugent, a man who tries his best to be respectable and elegant but who innocently gets caught up in extraordinary situations. Myrna Loy was perfect as the stern yet likable Judge Margaret Turner, who is very loving & protective of her younger sister and who eventually sees just what a charming man Richard is. And Shirley Temple, with whom we are more familiar as a child star, turned out to be a very beautiful adolescent and was perfect for the role of the adorable, intelligent, lovesick Susan Turner.

I enjoy watching Cary Grant may a fool of himself, he will do what it takes to make a movie funny, but the star of this movie is Myrna Loy, she was in her forties, but she look like she was only in her thirties, and still sexy. he relax way of acting was wonderful to watch, never over acting, therefore she was quite believable, throw in a seventeen year old Shirly Temple, and the other supporting cast and you have a wonderful little movie. I won't spoil it for you, but I would surely recommend this movie for a enjoyable night watching movie. The funniest part of this movie is the race, I could not stop laughing, it was stupid, but rather funny. I think anyone who like Cary Grant and the lovely Myrna Loy will love this movie.