"A Song is Born" (1948)

A Song is Born (1948) is a remake of Ball of Fire (1941), and both were directed by Howard Hawks!  Or, rather, they're both based on the story "From A to Z" by Billy Wilder and Thomas Monroe.  They both have the same basic plot but, while Ball of Fire is a screwball comedy, A Song is Born is a musical comedy.  Although I enjoy the former more than most screwballs, I really do prefer the latter in nearly every way.  We'll get to that.

Like the earlier film, this is basically a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, only it's about a nightclub singer on the run who seeks refuge with seven professors, plus an eighth professor who turns out to be a handsome prince, sort of.

The Totten Foundation is a group of eight musical academics who have been working on a comprehensive encyclopedia of world music.  Whenever their sponsor, Miss Totten (Mary Field, who played the same role in Ball of Fire!!!), threatens to cut off their funding if they don't finish their work soon, the older academics throw Professor Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye) in her path.  Miss Totten has a crush on Hobart and is always easily convinced to continue supporting their project if he's the one talking to her.

After spending nine years locked away in an old New York mansion, the professors tell Miss Totten they're nearly finished cataloging, describing, and providing musical examples for every single form of music from Baroque to barbaric.  But then, two window washers (played by the popular duo Buck and Bubbles, aka Ford L. "Buck" Washington and John W. "Bubbles" Sublett) introduce them to jazz music, and the academics have a crisis of conscience.  How can they say their work is finished when they know absolutely nothing about jazz and have not included it in their encyclopedia?

Hobart Frisbee sets out to learn about jazz, swing, Dixie, jive, blues, and everything else jazz-influenced.  He does this by visiting nightclubs all over New York City and listening to a dazzling array of actual musicians and bands, including Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey (but not Benny Goodman because he is playing one of the other professors, the one up there wielding licorice stick).  While he's conducting all this research, Hobart eventually meets a girl.

Like so many Hawks films,  A Song is Born features a female character who has strength, style, determination, and a hidden sweetness that eventually shines through her tough exterior.  Here, it's a nightclub warbler called Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo) who starts out an opportunistic conniver and winds up a softhearted sweetheart.  Honey's gangster boyfriend Tony Crow (Steve Cochran) is on the lam, avoiding a murder rap, and he tells Honey to find someplace to hide until he can quick marry her so she can't be forced to testify that his alibi for that murder is a phony.

Oh, and her outfit is super-duper similar to what Barbara Stanwyck wears in Ball of Fire too!  I love that touch.  They both have this weird shimmery skirt that's actually just strips of sequined fabric.  Both versions are pretty daring, if you ask me.

Hobart had invited Honey to visit the Totten Foundation to discuss jazz music, and she decides that is the perfect place to hide out.  She plants herself in the midst of all those professors in the middle of the night and refuses to leave until she's been able to educate them.  Musically, of course.

Honey is not the only performer Hobart invited over, she's just the first to arrive.  The next day, a whole lot of the musicians he visited (including Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey) show up, and they play a perfectly delightful array of musical numbers, including the titular ditty "A Song is Born."  If you enjoy jazz, swing, or '40s music at all, you will be delighted by that whole segment.

Naturally, Hobart is dazzled by the glamorous, worldly Honey.  Naturally, she doesn't take him seriously at all.  But Hobart IS serious about her, and proposes.  Meanwhile, Honey's gangster boyfriend wants her to find a way out of the city that won't be spotted by the cops.  She's supposed to meet up with him out in the country for a quickie wedding.  

SPOILERS in the next two paragraphs!!!

Honey tricks Hobart and the other professors into taking her out to a gangster hideout, where she breaks Hobart's heart and Tony Crow smacks him around a bit for good measure.

Somehow, everyone ends up back at the Totten Foundation, including Tony Crow and his henchmen with a very deaf justice of the peace in tow to perform the wedding.  Honey realizes she's in love with Hobart and tries to get out of marrying Crow, but he threatens to have all the professors shot if she doesn't go through with the wedding.  However!  Love and music conquer all -- literally.  The professors use their knowledge of musical vibrations to overcome the gunmen and stop the wedding, and everything ends up happily.

END OF SPOILERS

I mentioned that I don't entirely prefer A Song is Born to Ball of Fire, and that really is only concerning the gangster boyfriend.  Steve Cochran as Tony Crow in this movie is pretty boring and rarely menacing.  He's annoying, and I feel very happy to see him get what he deserves.  But Dana Andrews as Joe Lilac in Ball of Fire is quietly, calmly dangerous, but also handsome and charming, which makes him much more formidable.  But, then, I'm a Dana Andrews fan, so I guess it's not shocking I prefer him.

Is this movie family friendly?  I think so!  There's the mildest of mild suggestiveness in a "mating song" performed toward the beginning, and Honey's nightclub outfit shows a goodly bit of skin.  She also shows off her legs to the professors to dazzle them.  One of the other professors is a widower and tries to give Hobart some marital advice that is very innocent and naïve.  There are a couple of kisses and the threat of violence.  No bad language.  I intend to show it to my kids one of these days.

This has been my contribution to the Danny Kaye Blogathon hosted by Poppity Talks Classic Film :-)

My Ten Favorite Non-Scary Movies for Fall

I don't like scary movies.  At all.  But I do like a good, broody, atmospheric, gothic-type movie, especially in October.  Something with dark vibes and dark shadows and dark characters, and maybe a little supernatural or psychological eeriness tossed in, but not actually a scary movie, you know?  Perfect for curling up on the couch with a mug of hot cider and a cozy blanket while the wind howls outside and the rain taps gently against the window...

Well, if you like those sorts of movies too, here's a list of ten I love and recommend!  Just in case you're craving some dark, moody, shadowy goodness yourself right now.  Links go to my own reviews so you can learn more about those titles if you'd like.

1. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988)  Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) and Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) help Sir Henry Baskerville (Kristoffer Tabori) uncover the dark truth behind his forbear's death out on the wild and gloomy moors.  I crave this every October, really.  Some years, I make myself watch a different version, just to make this more fresh the next year, but this is my favorite fall watch.  I often reread the book in October too.

2. Jane Eyre (1983)  Lonely governess Jane Eyre (Zelah Clarke) finds understanding, companionship, and love with Mr. Rochester (Timothy Dalton) in this pitch-perfect BBC miniseries that absolutely kickstarted my devotion to the book it's based on.  (If you don't have time for all four hours, the 2011 version is my other favorite, and it's half as long.  If you want to go really classic, the 1943 version is shrouded in shadows and mystery.)

3. Hamlet (2011) Hamlet (Bruce Ramsay) suspects his uncle Claudius (Peter Winfield) killed Hamlet's father before marrying his mother (Gillian Barber), and he spends the night after their wedding trying to find out.  They trim all of Hamlet down to 1 hour and 27 minutes, give it a neo-noir feel, and it is spectacular.  However, please note that it is rated R for some easy-to-skip adult scenes.  (If you can't get your hands on this version, or don't want to deal with the adult content, the 1948 Olivier and the 2009 Tennant versions both have excellent shadowy vibes and are tamer.)

4. Laura (1944) Detective Mark MacPherson (Dana Andrews) tries to solve the murder of a beautiful woman named Laura (Gene Tierney).  Her family and friends all insist she was lovable, intelligent, talented, and altogether wonderful... so why did someone want to kill her?  This is my favorite noir film, and it has one of the best twists in any movie I've ever seen.  Go into it not knowing much more than this and prepare to fall in love with Laura yourself.

5. The Phantom of the Opera (2004)  A beautiful young singer (Emmy Rossum) reunites with her childhood sweetheart (Patrick Wilson), but her mysterious singing mentor (Gerard Butler) turns out to be an obsessive, possessive killer who wants her for himself.  The whole production is over-the-top lavish, dripping with candlelight and shadows and emotions.  

6. Dead Again (1991)  An amnesiac woman (Emma Thompson) keeps having nightmares about scissors.  A kind P.I. (Kenneth Branagh) tries to help her recover her memory.  And then they discover they may be the reincarnations of two doomed lovers who lived back during the Roaring Twenties, and solving that long-ago murder may be the only way to secure their own peace and happiness.  This one is also rated R because Robin Williams cusses a LOT in his few scenes, and there's some violence.  It would clean up easily with a filtering service, though.

7. Rebecca (1940)  A young bride (Joan Fontaine) is haunted by the suspicion that her new husband (Laurence Olivier) still loves his dead first wife, Rebecca.  Such a fascinating look at doubt, obsession, misconceptions, and consequences.  It's one of Hitchcock's best.

8. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)  A teen girl (Theresa Wright) adores her visiting uncle (Joseph Cotten) until she begins to wonder if he's connected to a recent string of murders.  Another masterpiece about doubt and fear from Alfred Hitchcock.

9. Cry Wolf (1947)  A widow (Barbara Stanwyck) thinks her late husband's uncle (Errol Flynn) is hiding a terrible secret.  It turns out he is, but it's not the secret she's expecting.  There's murder and madness and a gloomy old manor house dripping with shadows -- and also combative romance, just to keep things peppy.

 

10. Meet Joe Black (1998)  Death (Brad Pitt) takes on a human body to experience life, manipulating an aging man (Anthony Hopkins) into helping him.  Death romances the man's daughter (Claire Forlani), tastes peanut butter for the first time, and learns what it means to be both human and kind.  This one is PG-13 mostly for a short and easy-to-skip love scene.

Have you seen any of these?  What are some of your favorite non-scary movies to watch in the fall?

My Answers to This Year's LOWCW Tag

Every year, Olivia and Heidi and I have a lot of fun coming up with the questions for our tag.  Every year, I look forward to answering them myself.  And, every year, there's at least one question that stumps me or makes me have to think really hard about my answer.  Which is all part of the fun!  (This year it was question #9 that I struggled with.  Now you know.)

You can find the original tag here, on my kick-off post.  Also, don't forget that today is the LAST DAY to enter my giveaway!

If I've reviewed a movie I talk about here, I've linked its title to my full review, in case you're curious to read more about a particular film.

1) Favorite western focused on a lone hero? 

That would be 3:10 to Yuma (1957), in which struggling rancher Dan Evers (Van Heflin) singlehandedly stands up against an entire outlaw gang to take its leader, notorious Ben Wade (Glenn Ford) to the train that will transport him to prison.  It is a moody, atmospheric, aesthetically pleasing masterpiece of tension.

2) Favorite western focused on a group of compadres? 

The Magnificent Seven (1960), no contest.  It truly is magnificent.  The acting is superb, the writing is taut and masterful, and the score by Elmer Bernstein is one of the finest movie scores ever written.  I never, ever get tired of this movie.

3) Favorite western with a female main character? 

The Rare Breed (1966).  It's about a British widow (Maureen O'Hara) and her daughter (Juliet Mills) who bring a prize Hereford bull to the St. Louis stockyards to auction off.  They get worried that something terrible will befall the bull while it's being shipped to its new owner (Brian Keith) in Texas, so they insist on accompanying the man (James Stewart) tasked with delivering him.  It's a pretty unusual western in a lot of ways, and really enjoyable.

4) Favorite western with a POC main character? 

That would be Silverado (1985).  It has three main characters: Emmett (Scott Glenn), Paden (Kevin Kline), and Mal (Danny Glover), who join forces to take down a common enemy.  Mal's trying to save his family's homestead and convince his sister to abandon some questionable life choices she's been more or less forced to make.

Now, since Silverado is an ensemble piece, I'm going to answer this question twice so I can also mention Buck and the Preacher (1972) , which Sidney Poitier starred in and directed.  It's about African American pioneers seeking new homes in Kansas after the Civil War.  I highly recommend it to older teens and adults.  It probably hits a little too heavy for kids.

5) Favorite western with kids in it? 

Shane (1953) is told through the eyes of a boy (Brandon de Wilde) who idolizes the gunfighter (Alan Ladd) that his father (Van Heflin) and mother (Jean Arthur) have befriended and hired to work on their farm.  It's a beautiful meditation on what happens when a child idolizes an adult, and the kind of influence that idolization can have on the adult in question.  Shane works as hard as he can not to let that little boy down, but he works even harder to convince the boy that his own father is the real hero of the story.

6) Favorite western set somewhere other than the United States? 

The Man from Snowy River (1982).  It's also my favorite movie of all time, and it's all about a young man coming of age in Australia, finding work and falling in love and generally proving himself.  I saw this in the theater when I was two years old and fell in love with horses, Australia, and westerns all in one fell swoop.  It's been my favorite ever since.

7) Favorite "western" that doesn't fit the genre's dictionary definition? 

Well, The Proud Rebel (1958) takes place in Illinois, and so it's not technically a western.  But it feels like a western, so I call it one anyway.  It's about a man (Alan Ladd) searching for a doctor who can cure his mute son (David Ladd).  They end up working for a farmer (Olivia de Havilland) who's being harassed by some neighbors that want to buy her land, or force her off it if she won't sell.  And they have to overcome a bunch of problems, but they also form a nice little family in the process.

8) Favorite funny western? 

Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), always and forever.  A quirky, clever drifter (James Garner) takes the job as sheriff in a lawless goldrush town, makes a deputy out of the town drunk (Jack Elam), falls in love with the mayor's daughter (Joan Hackett), and dispatches a family of ne'erdowells, all in the most unconventional ways possible.  It's a spoof of western tropes, but such a loving spoof that its humor completely works.

9) Favorite tragic/sad western? 

The Alamo (1960).  Almost every single character dies.  Gloriously, yes, but still!  Tragic.  And yet, I watch it over and over.

10) Favorite western TV show?

The Big Valley (1965-69).  I love every member of the Barkley family, most especially Heath (Lee Majors) and Victoria (Barbara Stanwyck).  I want to be friends with them and hang out with them and go on adventures with them and just... can I either get adopted into or marry into that family already?  Please?

There you have it!  I can't believe that today is the last official day of Legends of Western Cinema Week already!  Like I said, if you haven't entered my giveaway yet, do that here.  And if you haven't made your guesses about my movie poster game yet, do that here.

Happy Birthday, Dear Vic

Today would have been actor Vic Morrow's 92nd birthday.  You very likely know by now that he is an actor very dear to my heart.  He's been one of my favorite actors for decades now.

I've reviewed several of Vic's movies over the years, as well as gushed about his character Sergeant Saunders (my favorite fictional character of all time) on the show Combat! (1962-67) over and over.  Today, I'd like to round up the best of those posts and reviews and share them here with you, to celebrate his birthday and pay tribute to an actor I will forever hold dear.

Combat! focuses on a squad of American soldiers battling their way through Normandy after the D-DAY invasion, during World War Two.  It has been my favorite show since I was 14 years old, and I wrote a whole post about why I love it so much.

Although I love all the characters on Combat!, it's Vic Morrow's Sergeant Saunders who holds the highest spot in my heart.  A couple of years ago, I mused in this post about why he is so dear to me.

I once reviewed my absolute favorite episode of Combat!, "The Walking Wounded," which also happens to be the first full episode I ever watched.

I've also reviewed my other favorite C! episode, "The Long Way Home, Parts 1 and 2."  If you've never watched the show, but are curious about it, that's a great one to start with because it really lets every regular character shine, and helps you get to know all of them nicely.  You can watch it on YouTube -- part one is here, and part two is here.  If you're a fan of meaty dramas with amazing character development, solid acting, and plenty of WWII action, definitely give it a whirl.

I shared a list of my ten favorite Combat! episodes a few years ago.

But I don't only love to watch Vic Morrow in Combat! -- I really like a lot of his movies too, and I've reviewed several of them.

Blackboard Jungle (1955) was Vic's first screen role, though he had been acting on stage for quite a while by then.  He turns in a searing performance as a hoodlum bent on destruction.  Plus, he gets to square off against Glenn Ford, who is another favorite of mine.

Until Combat! came along, Vic mostly played bad guys, and his turn in the Barbara Stanwyck Show episode "The Key to the Killer" (1960) is no exception.  But he makes his character not merely vicious and explosive, but gives him a kind of needy, yearning desperation to be better than he is.  I always dig getting to see favorite actors opposite each other, and I love that Vic Morrow and Barbara Stanwyck got a chance to share the screen.

In Posse from Hell (1961), Vic plays yet another bad guy, this time a wild west outlaw facing off against Audie Murphy.  This is only a year before he would begin playing Sgt. Saunders, but it's only a small part, and you can see why he would be hungry for a starring role on the small screen.

The last post I'll share in this little birthday roundup is this fun one I did for a blogathon a few years ago, where I imagined up the perfect cast for a 1950s version of The Avengers. I set it in the year 1956 just so I could cast Vic as a key character.

Vic Morrow was an actor who could take a flat, one-note character and elevate it into someone you can't take your eyes off.  He could turn mean characters tender, and charming characters vicious.  And when he occasionally got to sink his teeth into a really deep, fully rounded character like Saunders, he was breathtaking.

Happy birthday, dear Vic.  Always.

My Ten Favorite Female On-Screen Characters

A few years ago, I did a list of my ten favorite movie/TV characters.  It didn't occur to me at the time I was making that list, but... they were all men.  So... time to do another list :-)  Here are my ten favorite female characters on screens big and small.

I love some of these characters in print too, but here I'm focusing on their onscreen iterations, okay?

1.  Victoria Barkley (Miss Barbara Stanwyck) from The Big Valley (1965-69).  I wrote a whole post a few years ago about how much I want to be like Victoria when I grow up.  She is smart, compassionate, feisty, stubborn, generous, loyal, and forgiving.  Wonderful woman.

2.  Anne Shirley (Megan Followes) from Anne of Green Gables (1985) and Anne of Avonlea (1987).  She's very unlike me in a lot of ways -- she's as unshy as I am shy, she's got a quick temper and mine is a slower simmer, and she keeps grudges, while I am usually quick to forgive.  But she's also so similar.  Like me, she's an imaginative daydreamer.  A book-lover.  An outsider.  I relate to Anne a lot, both in the books and in these filmed versions.

3.  Jane Eyre (Zelah Clarke) from the 1983 BBC version of Jane Eyre.  Jane is actually my favorite fictional heroine overall, but this list is supposed to be about on-screen characters, so she drops a few slots here.  Anyway, I love Jane because she is so principled, stalwart, and loving.  She spends her whole life insisting she will obey God (and her conscience) rather than men, and standing up to man after man who tries to bend her to their own will instead of God's.  She's an inspiration to me.

4.  Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) from the Thin Man movies.  Nora is the epitome of a spunky, helpful, supportive wife.  She and her husband Nick Charles (William Powell) are #marriagegoals for me because they genuinely enjoy being together.  They make each other laugh, encourage each other, help each other, and keep each other sane.  I adore them, but especially Nora.

5.  Lucy Eleanor Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) from While You Were Sleeping (1995).  Lucy is basically exactly me.  Put me in that situation, parents dead and me unmarried, and I'd be Lucy.  Have a cat, break things with my Christmas tree, create an imaginary life for myself with a handsome stranger, and totally be unable to tell people truths because I'm so lonely I can't bring myself to give them up.

6.  Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015).  Gaby is extremely competent.  She can fix cars, drive cars, banter, dance, spy, and survive with the best of them.  She is 1/3 of why I love that movie so much.

7.  Beatrice (Emma Thompson) from Much Ado About Nothing (1993).  Oh look, another intelligent, feisty, witty, sarcastic, fierce female character.  Are you sensing a theme here?  Clearly, I have a Type when it comes to female characters I will gravitate toward.  Beatrice also happens to have been written by Shakespeare, so she gets a extra good dialog and some above-par character development.  Thompson manages to blend plenty of wistful in with the prickly so you don't just want her to go away all the time.

8.  Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) from Lost (2004-10).  I'm not into "shipping" and don't go in for "One True Pairings" as a general rule... but Sawyer and Juliet are my Lost OTP.  Also, you'll notice they're a canonical couple.  I get very annoyed with people who want Sawyer to get back with Kate because Juliet is so Right For Him.  She matches him in intelligence and stubbornness, gently guides him to becoming a better person, inspires him, uplifts him, and... it's probably weird for me to be talking so much about a guy on a list that's supposed to be about female characters, but Juliet's patience and perseverance with Sawyer is a big part of why I love her, so... there it is.

9.  Emma Woodhouse (Gwyneth Paltrow) from Emma (1996).  I don't like Emma in Jane Austen's book until the very end, but Paltrow's Emma has a kindness and elegance and sweetness that make the character one I'd love to hang out with, not one I want to kick.  Remarkable achievement, I think.

10.  Dr. Michaela Quinn (Jane Seymour) from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-98).  Smart, stubborn, courageous, kind, helpful, determined, protective, loving, a little bossy... Dr. Mike is everything I like in a woman.  As you may have come to realize while reading this list.

Okay, that's it!  Who are your favorite female screen characters?  Do we share any favorites?

"Ball of Fire" (1941)

I don't think I realized it until probably my third time watching Ball of Fire, but this is actually a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!  A beautiful girl running away from a person close to her seeks sanctuary with seven social-misfits (and one handsome prince) who protect and defend her while she also helps them.

Only in this movie, she's a nightclub singer, not a princess, and the seven misfits (and one handsome prince) are professors writing an encyclopedia, not dwarf miners (though the seven ARE all shorter than the handsome prince).

For a person who writes fairy tale retellings, sometimes I'm not the swiftest at spotting them, heh.  Even when they open with a prologue like this:

But I did get it eventually.

Anyway.  So, there are eight professors working together in a big, fancy house to write an encyclopedia.  They have a housekeeper (Kathleen Howard) to look after them (which means nagging them about messes and indelicate subject matter and eating too much jam), and they're paid for their work by a grant from a man who left a quarter of a million dollars to have an encyclopedia written.  Why?  Because he invented the electric toaster, but the Encyclopedia Britannica refused to add him to their pages.  So he decided to have a new one written.

Trouble is, they're not done writing it yet, and the money is running out, as his daughter (Mary Field) and her lawyer arrive to tell them.  Fortunately, said daughter finds Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) very attractive.  As long as he smiles at her and says lovely things about her father, she'll keep funding them.

That very day, Prof. Potts, linguist, has a brush with a garbageman that makes him realize he is hopelessly outdated when it comes to modern slang usage, which happens to be what he's currently writing about.  So he goes out into the world to seek slang.  And brother, does he ever find it.

Enter Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), singer at the nightclub Prof. Potts goes to for research.

Potts is all business.  He listens and watches, only interested in academia.

Sugarpuss sings a song loaded with slang.

Potts dutifully writes it down.

After her number, Sugarpuss gets waylaid by two guys (one of them played by Dan Duryea) who work with her boyfriend, gangster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews).

Prof. Potts interrupts while these two charming gents are explaining to Sugarpuss that Joe Lilac is in trouble with the law and she needs to hide for a few days until the cops quit looking for her.  Prof. Potts asks her to assist with his linguistic research, but she tells him to scram.  He leaves one of his cards with her in case she changes her mind.

So Potts goes back to the other professors, who have waited up late to ask him all about his experiences out in the real world.  They get very enthusiastic when they find out he went to a nightclub, and some of them nearly swoon when he talks about going backstage to talk to entertainers.  They're much more interested in finding out if he noticed any dancing girls wearing stockings and makeup than in any linguistic discoveries he may have made.  He finds them all very silly.

As Potts is just about to go to bed, who should come knocking at his door but Sugarpuss.  Her boyfriend's pals have decided this would be a great place for her to hide out until the cops lay off Joe.  Of course, she doesn't tell Potts that, she says she's here for research.

When he says it's too late at night for research, and she should come back tomorrow, Sugarpuss coolly unhooks one stocking from her garter belt, unrolls it, and demands he feel her bare foot.  It's chilled and wet, and she's sure she's catching a terrible cold.

The other professors (played by Oskar Homolka, Henry Travers, S. Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall, Leonid Kinskey, Richard Haydn, and Aubrey Mather, got all that?) are only to happy to diagnose her symptoms.  They insist she spend the night rather than risk her falling ill.

Seven of these eight people are very happy indeed to have Sugarpuss O'Shea as their guest.  Actually, eight of them -- one just doesn't know it yet.

Now, the first time I watched this, I watched it mostly because Dana Andrews was in it and I wanted to see him play opposite Stanwyck.  And I need to warn you that if you're watching this movie just for the Dana Andrews content, you might come away disappointed.  He's not in it much, and he doesn't get much to work with while he's around.  Though you do get to see him wearing this pajama jacket over his regular clothes while at a police station, which is not something you get to see in just any old Dana Andrews movie.

He's very yummy, as always.  I maintain that no one has ever worn a suit as well as Dana Andrews.  (No, not even Alan Ladd.  But Alan wore cowboy hats better.)

Why is Dana Andrews so handsome?  It's a great mystery.

Anyway, that's enough time spent on Joe Lilac, who's trying to convince the police that a pair of pajamas with his initials on them that are linked to a murder are not his at all, even if his girlfriend Sugarpuss did buy him a pair just like it once upon a time. It's time to get back to dear Prof. Potts.  He's assembled several other people, including a garbageman and a newsboy, to assist him in his quest to collect modern slang.  Why?  He says it's because "Slang, as the poet Carl Sandburg has said, 'is language which takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work.'"

Some of the guys helping him think this is pretty nifty stuff, but Sugarpuss is bored.

So she livens up the dusty old mansion by teaching the other professors how to dance the conga.  Which they are only too happy to learn from her.  But Potts isn't happy.  She's his research material, darn it all, not a dance instructor!

Turns out there are a few things Sugarpuss could teach Prof. Potts.  Which she proceeds to do, when he threatens to throw her out for disturbing work on the encyclopedia.  She turns on the charm, and how.

Potts really doesn't stand a chance.

Especially when she figures out a way to make herself tall enough to teach him how to kiss.  Or, as she puts it, shows him the meaning of the slang phrase "yum yum."

Now, Cooper has been pretty grim and serious through this whole film so far, with just a glint of charm here and there.  But now we get a glimpse of the Gary Cooper that was a matinee idol and left female audiences swooning when he got more traditionally romantic roles.

Meanwhile, Joe Lilac has found himself a table corner to perch on (it's a thing -- watch a Dana Andrews movie, and he's inevitably going to perch on the corner of a desk or table) and calls up Sugarpuss.  He's got a swell plan: she can marry him, and then she can't be forced to testify against him!

Just one problem.  Sugarpuss just got a proposal from someone a whole lot nicer than Joe Lilac.  Which she accepted, sorta.  But she knows she doesn't belong in Potts's world.  She's not nice enough for him.  She's more on Joe Lilac's level, and she proves it to herself by convincing Potts she'll marry him if he takes her to New Jersey to meet her 'dad.'  Who, of course, is the gangster she's actually intending to marry.

All of the other professors come along.  As Sugarpuss toasts them and bids them goodnight, she calls them "Eight squirrelly cherubs right out of this world."  They think this is the highest compliment they've ever been paid.

Now, honestly, if Dana Andrews came to your door in a suit and hat with a spray of flowers pinned to his lapel, wouldn't you be a teensy bit tempted to marry him?

SPOILER ALERT:  I'm giving away the whole end of the movie after this.  If you don't want it spoiled, skip down to the shot of the words The End, okay?

Sugarpuss goes away with Joe so he'll let Potts and the other professors go home. She thinks this will solve everything.  Once her pet professors are safely gone, she announces she's not going to marry Joe Lilac.  And you can bet she won't, either -- nobody gets stubborn like Barbara Stanwyck!

(Oh, look, he found a desk!  My nickname for Dana Andrews is Desk Percher for a reason.  Pretty sure he's sitting on a desk in the shot above with the nice hat and flowers, too.)

Just one hitch in Sugarpuss's plan -- Joe's sent his hit men (including a smarmy Dan Duryea -- I can never like that guy!) over to the encyclopedia house.  If she doesn't marry him, they'll start shooting her squirrelly cherubs.

Well, yeah, guess she has to go through with it, huh?

Not so fast!  The professors take out the two hit men and tickle them to make them tell where Joe is holding Sugarpuss.  I'm not even making that up.  Turns out killer gangsters are very ticklish.  Prof. Potts arrives, ready to fight for the woman he loves.

He's not actually any good at fighting, but he wins anyway because Gary Cooper's name is above the title, not Dana Andrews's.  And everything turns out just fine, as you can see from the other professors' faces as they watch Prof. Potts remind Sugarpuss just what "yum yum" really means.

Is this movie family friendly?  Yeah.  No cussing and only implied violence (even the fist fight at the end is tame).  It has some mild innuendo in the dialog that kids won't get, and a few shots of Stanwyck's marvelous legs getting admired, plus a few movie-star-style kisses.

This has been my contribution to the Queen of Sass: Barbara Stanwyck Blogathon hosted by Pale Writer.  Click on that button or this link to find the official blogathon page, complete with list of entries.