The Girl Next Door

GIRL NEXT DOOR is not your typical Fox musical. It's well done for what it is, but a little strange in that it includes a couple of animated scenes. Also a "dream ballet" ala OKLAHOMA!. The songs are unmemerable and the nightclub number in which June Haver and later Dan Dailey take part is like...unreal. How could all that scenery and visuals take place on a nightclub stage. Oh, I forgot..This is a musical. More like a musical fantasy in many ways. The one standout number has no dancing. Dan Dailey and Billy Gray as father and son sing a ditty while doing the dishes. They juggle and handle the dishware and silverware very cleverly. Don't know how many takes it took to do it, but it's a highlight of the movie and that bit alone is worth watching the film. Watch for the underused and underrated Cara Williams. A delight. Dennis Day, less so! Too bad this was Havers last film, as she had talent, although why her voice was dubbed after doing many earlier musicals is a mystery.

Entertaining Dan Dailey and June Haver film. It's the story of a boy affected by his widower father's attachment to the woman who has moved next door.

The singing, dancing and cartoon like sequence scenes are an absolute joy to watch.

Dennis Day is wonderful here in a supporting role along with a very young looking Cara Williams.

The story moves along at a rapid pace and is well done with the music adding so much to the story.

Look for a stodgy Clifford Sunberg as a butler.

Such an obscure '50s Fox musical that I'd never even heard of it (and I know my '50s musicals), and made very late in the cycle of modest entertainments starring the likes of Dan Dailey and June Haver, this one has a few aces up its sleeve. There's a surprising amount of sung exposition at the beginning, under the credits, and later on some very brief singing sequences in the middle of dialogue -- it's as if even standard Fox musicals wanted to be more like their Rodgers and Hammerstein cousins on Broadway. It shows how pervasive the whole musical-comedy mode was back then. Later there are a couple of animated sequences that delve psychologically into the characters' motivations, and of course a dream ballet, and an amusingly overblown production number with Haver, "Nowhere Guy." The story's no great shakes, the songs run from OK to pretty good, and Haver proves again that proficiency at singing and dancing is less vital than personality, which she lacks. Dailey is a likable romantic counterpart, and Cara Williams is an invaluable best-friend-making-tart-comments -- though it's hard to accept that she'd fall for the rabbity face and syrupy tenor of Dennis Day. The utterly '50s production design is fun, and the more thorough musicalizing than usual gives this otherwise standard effort a couple of bonus points. All in all, it's very watchable.

Candy-colored, candy-coated musical comedy from Fox with lots of effervescence and wiseacre pizazz. June Haver plays globe-trotting musical starlet who buys her first (rather beautiful) home in Scarsdale and, despite some reservations ("Frankenstein slept here!"), she moves right in and throws a party; the widower next door quickly becomes the main attraction in her life, but his young son isn't so happy about having to compete with this female interloper ("I'd rather have a buddy than a female fuddy-duddy anytime," his dad lies to him). Surprisingly funny, lively, studio-set suburban shenanigans has more songs than "Tommy", yet the choreography is rather intricate and the cast is full of joshing good cheer. Haver's new beau Dan Dailey soft-shoes through with a big goofy grin; Cara Williams is June's tippling best friend who pairs off (rather unconvincingly) with tenor Dennis Day, who sings to the rafters (literally); Billy Gray is Dailey's son, who has an excellent dramatic scene at the police station. Notable for two animated sequences (courtesy UPA), as well as a lovely fantasy number where Dailey is forced to choose between his son and his new sweetheart. Not quite in the same class as MGM's musical entries from this era, but a lot of jovial fun. **1/2 from ****

As of this writing, the IMDb user rating for this unpretentious musical is an amazingly high 8.3 - higher than The Band Wagon also released in 1953. So what accounts for such a rating? Most of the songs are awful ("I'd rather have a pal than a gal, anytime" is an example), and the choreography is just so-so. But despite these deficiencies, The Girl Next Door is one of the most amiable entertainments from the '50s. The slight story is played with humor and warmth by the entire cast. The dialog is bright. The modest fashions and decor make this a fascinating time capsule - closer to early 50s suburbia than the highly stylized productions from MGM.

Although it's not about to supplant The Band Wagon from a critical standpoint, this film does weave a particular magic and has obviously won its way into a lot of hearts - mine included!