Jeannie

I stumbled on this British film from 1941, Jeannie, and was charmed at once by its strong, stoic heroine who has to put up with her aged father's cruel taunts while she slaves away serving him his tea and doing his laundry. Barbara Mullen was quite plucky in the role and I smiled through much of the picture. Michael Redgrave is always good and here he's quite handsome as Jeannie's "savior" when, after her father dies and leaves her some money for all her years of servitude to him, she decides to take a trip to Vienna and makes mistake after mistake on her tour; he steps in like a good gentleman and helps her out. He's on his way to Vienna to sell his newly designed washing machine. Will that be successful and help bring him and Jeannie together permanently?

You can find this film online if you do a search for it. The print quality is a little soft but tolerable. This was Barbara Mullen's first movie. Now I'd like to see more of her!

Quaint, veddy British (with requisite dodgy Scottish accents) romance. Michael Redgrave may be one of the most attractive male film actors of all: his performances are soft and safe, even pudgy of character, but at the same time he's always pursuing the girl, and he's always amusing and amused, charming and bloody nice. He's as exquisite in this as he was in The Lady Vanishes, but this is a much lesser film. It's worth seeing for him, and for the ending, which goes the way you'd want it to go.

American actress Barbara Mullen stars in this charming British comedy as a Scottish old maid who slaves in her dour father's house. When he dies she decides to go to work as a servant until she discovers he'd left her almost 300 pounds. She decides to go to Vienna because she likes Strauss' "Blue Danube Waltz." The unworldly woman soon gets into to all kinds of jams on the boat crossing the channel and then on the train across Europe. Luckily, she bumps into a salesman (Michael Redgrave) who decides to take the woman under his wing. He's also bound for Vienna where he hopes to sell a patent for a new type of washing machine.

In Vienna and with her hotel reservation fouled up, she embark to the Hotel Splendide where Redgrave is staying. They also meet two moochers: a bankrupted count (Albert Lieven) who thinks Mullen is an heiress, and a party girl (Kay Hammond) out for a good time and a free meal.

After a week or so, Mullen is about out of money but has experienced the delights of Vienna, including hearing her favorite song. And after several mix-ups with Redgrave, she goes back home to find a job as a servant. Is she destined to a life of drudgery? Mullen is a delight as the sensible Scot who learns a thing or two on her trip. Redgrave turns in another terrific performance as the bemused salesman. Hammond and Lieven are solid. Cast also includes Wilfrid Lawson as the father, Rachel Kempson and Joan Kemp-Welch as her sisters, Katie Johnson as Mathilde, Phyllis Stanley as the neighbor. Also look for Googie Withers, Max Adrian, Sebastian Cabot, and Esme Percy.

Mullen's film debut.

Jeannie is Barbara Mullen, a Scots girl whose dour father dies and leave her his fortune of 297 pounds. She decides she wants to enjoy life for once, before she settles down, so she books a trip to Vienna. Problems crop up on the trip, and it's always dapper Michael Redgrave, an inventor on his way to Vienna to see about financing, who helps her again and again. When they get to Vienna, however, they fall out; Kay Hammond is a dress model and a good-time girl who makes eyes at Redgrave, and Albert Lieven is a pfennig-less Graf who thinks that Jeannie's fortune is a sizeable one.

It's a charming movie, between Miss Mullen's impressive accent -- she hailed from Boston Massachusetts -- and Redgrave's self-assured British gentleman. All of the performances are fine, particularly Wilfred Lawson as Miss Mullen's horror of a father -- I remember his turns as Alfie Dolittle in Pascal's PYGMALION and Mr. Rudge in EXPRESSO BONGO. Roland Pertwee and Anatole de Grunewald do a fine script from Aimee Stuart's stage play, and Harold French directs his actors well. It's filled with cameos of some of the fine actors he had worked with over the years.

This is a charming little romantic comedy, directed by Harold French, that reliable supplier of civilised entertainments. Uniquely, it gives a starring role to someone who has invented a new type of washing machine (Michael Redgrave). It then pairs him romantically with an heiress (Barbara Mullen, famous years later on TV with Doctor Finlay's Casebook) with a love of Strauss and the The Blue Danube. The film rambles all over the place, but that's all part of the charm - it's all about the oddities and pleasing digressions of life. A witty script, delightful characterisations, a most unusual but effective romantic pairing, and all the quaintness of an utterly lost age.