It's Ann Blyth you'll remember from the romantic pairing here, not the aging Robert Montgomery in one of his last films. He's a lawyer turned movie star turned informant for the army, hired to romance Blyth, a suspected thief. That element of the story is never really pursued, the bulk of the action revolving Montgomery's overbearing mother (Jane Cowl) and Blyth's free-spirited and even more free-thinking nature. After "Mildred Pierce's" Veda and "Another Part of the Forest's" Regina, this is one of Blyth's best non-musical appearances, and she is winning every minute that she is on screen.
Montgomery seems to be trying to recapture his youth from all of those MGM romantic comedies of the 1930's and is definitely outclassed by his co-star and on-screen mother. Cowl ("Stop thinking of me as your mother. I'm talking as your attorney.") is a very handsome older actress; In fact, here, she resembles William Powell in drag in "Love Crazy". The party sequence which introduces Blyth to Cowl's society friends (which includes a very butch "glamazon") resembles the "at home" gathering in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmallion" and its "Ascot Gavotte" revisal in "My Fair Lady", with Blyth shocking and delighting guests at the same time. The unbelievability of the romantic pairing is greatly aided by some really witty lines (Cowl asking "Haven't you ever longed for the patter of little feet", to which Montgomery responds, "You mean mice?") which along with Blyth and Cowl raise the film from a "C" to a "B".
Montgomery seems to be trying to recapture his youth from all of those MGM romantic comedies of the 1930's and is definitely outclassed by his co-star and on-screen mother. Cowl ("Stop thinking of me as your mother. I'm talking as your attorney.") is a very handsome older actress; In fact, here, she resembles William Powell in drag in "Love Crazy". The party sequence which introduces Blyth to Cowl's society friends (which includes a very butch "glamazon") resembles the "at home" gathering in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmallion" and its "Ascot Gavotte" revisal in "My Fair Lady", with Blyth shocking and delighting guests at the same time. The unbelievability of the romantic pairing is greatly aided by some really witty lines (Cowl asking "Haven't you ever longed for the patter of little feet", to which Montgomery responds, "You mean mice?") which along with Blyth and Cowl raise the film from a "C" to a "B".