In Liebe eine 1

It's a special meeting of the Pacific Palisades Board of Education. President Frank Michaelson (James Stewart) is being pushed to resign after some unflattering newspaper stories. In his defence, he recounts the whole story starting with his teenage daughter Mollie (Sandra Dee) and her influence on the male sex who are all grabby hands. The freshman college girl heads off into the bohemian world followed by her overprotective father.

I like Stewart's comedy. He's an old duddy and he knows it. It's funny that way. The Mr. Smith jokes are good fun. It's 50's trying to deal with the 60's and doing it in a safe way. Jimmy gets in a few chuckles but Dee is a bit stiff. She's playing innocence as clueless without the comedy. One may notice Bob Denver and he has a fun scene with Jimmy. Overall, it's the lightest of comedies with limited effect and a little long. The movie only comes alive with Jimmy.

Much as I always love a Jimmy Stewart film, this is a rather lame comedy, interesting mainly for an early Jerry Goldsmith score. Sandra Dee tries hard to shake her golly Molly character she played in A Summer Place (she is named Molly here too) and Audrey Meadows does well in her perfunctory role, but the script is just too lame to engender interest.

A primary flaw in my opinion is that Stewart's character was too unlikeable. The main character of the concerned father should have been more hesitant about interfering in his daughter's college life. It would have engendered more laughs and maintained sympathy with the character. But here Stewart's character is far too aggressive and possessive to the point of irritation. His character would come across as such even more so in our more enlightened times. Yelling at his daughter, yelling at her boyfriend, calling him a punk several times in the film and otherwise meddling in what should be his daughter's "space" as they would later say (the film is from 1963 so just short of the hippie generation) hardly endears him to a modern audience, in my opinion.

In a dated film like this it's difficult to judge how flat the comedy was in 1963, but words like "virgin" would hardly gain a laugh today. Some scenes seem especially dated, such as the coffee house scene with Bob Denver as a folksinger, the fast French cars, while it's hard to imagine that a writer would attempt a laugh by having the parents listen to a record at 331/3 when it's supposed to be played at 78 or 45. Like how desperate can writers be to include something as ludicrous as that for laughs. It might have been funny when electronic music was first invented but not in 1963! Similarly lame was the scene in the dorm with the French girl students, as if having a group of students yelling in French was supposed to elicit bowls of laughter.

But any film starring Jimmy Stewart, in my view the greatest of all American film actors, including Marlon Brando, can never be a waste of time.

A good portion of 1960s comedies focused on the generation gap between straight-laced parents and their hippie children. If you like that theme, you can watch a few James Stewart flicks where he plays a harried father to teenaged girls. In Take Her, She's Mine, Sandra Dee goes off to college and he worries about her virtue. Told in funny flashbacks, we see a photograph of an outrageous end result and Jimmy narrates the setup - like getting arrested at a sit-in and he's carried out of the room by the police.

There's a hilarious theme of the movie that everyone mistakes James Stewart's character for a famous actor. When he sees Sandra off at the airport, he's chased around by autograph seekers even as he insists, "I'm not him!" Finally, he gives in and signs their papers, as the narration says, "Ever since that movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. . ." The little boys run off with a "Thanks, Mr. Stewart!" In the same vein, Robert Morley enjoys every second of his cameo performance. He dispenses advise to Jimmy, and after he leaves, he exclaims to the waiter, "Do you know who that fellow is? Henry Fonda, the American movie star! Can you ever forget him in Gone With the Wind?" I had to press pause I was laughing so hard.

The movie is dated, though, so don't expect to laugh so much during every minute. Nowadays, parents don't fly across the country to check on their kids in college, thinking a sorority party is the end of the world. But if you like this funny parenting flick, check out David Niven's version of 1968 The Impossible Years. It has exactly the same ending, and the rest of the movie follows a similar theme of two teenaged daughters driving their protective father nuts.

A 1963 comedy starring James Stewart & Sandra Dee. Being put through the wringer by a civic board, Stewart recounts how he ended up there when daughter Dee went to college & became the apple of many a man's eye. At first getting a musical berth at a proto-hippie coffee joint, she soon flexes her artistic muscle (evidenced by her painting canvases at home wearing a 2 piece bikini where an ogling man nearly nearly crashes his car!) prompting her & her French beau to go to France (since she's won an art scholarship). Throughout poor Stewart, a lawyer, gets a front row vista to the culture wars as he gets arrested during a college sit-in, can't get a stiff drink at the coffee bar & having Dee's Parisian female roommates attack him when he honestly asked if they were hookers. Dee gets a wedding proposal from her man w/a date to meet his parents at a masquerade party but things don't go smoothly since her man's parents are snobs. Will the wedding go off w/o a hitch? Typical of Stewart's 60's comedy output which found him more stunned at the state of the world to reflect what was going on in burgeoning youth movement of the time w/Dee cute as a button (& a fellow New Jerseyian, go Bayonne!) trying to keep her dad's sanity in check. Also starring Audrey Meadows (wasted frankly!) as Stewart's wife, Bob Denver (billed as Robert!) playing a future version of his Maynard G. Krebs persona from Dobie Gillis, Robert Morley as a fellow traveler Stewart encounters in Paree & John McGiver as the head of the board impugning Stewart's character. Interesting fact the script was based on a play written by Henry & Phoebe Ephron, writer Nora's parents, who based the daughter's character on her.

It's been commented on by many critics that James Stewart has been the actor most partnered with top directors. His films with Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Frank Capra have been studied over and over again. But it would surprise many to learn that after the eight he did with Anthony Mann, the second place finisher is Henry Koster with five films with James Stewart.

The five films are Harvey, No Highway, Mr. Hobbs Goes On a Vacation, Dear Brigitte and Take Her She's Mine. And then they further subdivide as Stewart plays three types of character. He's the absent minded professor in No Highway and Dear Brigitte and the harassed father of girls in Mr. Hobbs and Take Her She's Mine. Both of which he plays to perfection. And of course there is Harvey in a class all by itself.

Father is the last to know that his daughter has grown up to be a "dish." But that is in fact what Sandra Dee has done. Apparently just hanging around has put all the boys' hormones into an exponential overdrive. Poor Stewart is walking innocently into all kinds of grief trying to protect Dee's virtue. The California based Stewart's concern has taken him to New England and then to Paris.

Some pretty funny things happen to poor Jimmy. But I think you'll like best the way his costume falls apart on a chartered boat in the Seine due to some bad advice that he gets from a fellow hotel guest Robert Morley. Still cracks me up 43 years after first seeing it.

Audrey Meadows plays the patient wife and mother to Stewart and Dee borrowing a little from Alice Kramden. And I think today's audience will appreciate seeing Bob Denver essentially reprising his role as a Maynard G. Krebs type beatnik. Look for James Brolin in a tiny role as one of the hormonally charged college kids.

Koster and Stewart work well together. Maybe at some point his partnership with Stewart will get some study as well.