(1958) The first time I saw this movie as a teenager on TV, I admired the multiple talents of Gene Kelly (then 45), but I fell in love with Natalie Wood (19 with already fourteen years as an actress).

The Jewish daughter of Arnold (Everett Sloane) and Rose Morgenstern (Claire Trevor), having recently graduated from high school while her 13-year-old brother has his bar mitzvah, Marjorie (Wood), feeling pressure from her boyfriend, Sandy Lamm (Edd Byrnes), whose parents own a New York City department store, and her mother to get married and have children ("Someday you're going to have to do it") goes off for the summer ("Everybody's rushing me") with her chum Marsha Zelenko (Carolyn Jones) to Camp Tamarack as a girls' dramatic counselor.

With Marsha taking the lead (on her way to a rendezvous with her piano-player beau), the girls take a canoe across the lake to the South Wind resort, where Marjorie gets introduced to Noel Airman (Kelly) at the playhouse. As a tremendous talent - dancer, singer, composer (he's been working on his musical Princess Jones for years) - the handsome 33-year-old affects women the way "whiskey hits an Indian," though he's actually like the head bartender in a parochial paradise who'd be just another waiter in the city.

Noel's young assistant, a bespectacled toad (his own self-deprecation), Wally Wronken (Martin Milner), immediately loses his heart to Marjorie (whom he calls Morning Glory after Noel gives her the appellation Morningstar), but she's all in for Noel. Ambitious to become an actress, hoping to get her break with him, Marjorie naively ignores Noel's warning her about getting into trouble if she stays; Marsha intimates to Marjorie that in order to achieve her dreams as other girls have (and in the future will) she needs to understand they couldn't have "clenched the deal without a few free samples."

However, her guardian angel, Uncle Samson (Ed Wynn), arrives at the resort to keep an eye on her. Disappointed with Marjorie's parents' machinations to protect their daughter from becoming another of his conquests, Noel explains his perspective to Uncle Samson: "Nice fellas don't have much fun." To which Uncle Samson - who becomes a member of the show, clowning as a befuddled matador - replies: "She's in love. It's a pity you can't be."

A renegade from his own prominent Jewish family, after Noel reveals to Marjorie and her parents (wanting a suitable match for her) that he'd flunked out of law school at Cornell, he expresses his frustration to her that he "can't buck your family and your ancient God of vengeance." From a screenplay by Everett Freeman, adapting Herman Wouk's novel, Irving Rapper directs this film of a bright, beautiful girl's brief rise before having to settle for less than she desired, with Max Steiner's score in the background.

Following Marjorie's graduation with Marsha from Hunter College, Noel once again turns up, just as she's on her way to a date with Dr David Harris (Martin Balsam), this time in a gray-flannel suit and earning a very respectable salary as "the Shakespeare of advertising." But he can't maintain his façade for long, especially after Wally's Broadway play, It Must Be Love, becomes a popular success.

After receiving Marjorie's unflinching love and moral support, he defeats her expectations, then departs to Mexico where he finishes Princess Jones, by pouring all of his passion for her into it.

The chronology is somewhat confusing since Marjorie somehow completes her college degree in one year. It's an open question for me as to whether Noel, who craves an audience's acceptance with critical acclaim, but only on his own terms, is an authentic artist of great ability - just not commercially viable - or not; similarly I'm left wondering if his love for Marjorie is the genuine article.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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