Tammy y el doctor

This was the third in the so-so TAMMY series, and it is certainly the best. Sandra Dee is absolutely adorable in the title role, the cute country bumpkin who is forever performing a good deed, for someone else, that is. This time she goes off with a sick, eldery friend(the great character actress Beulah Bondi) to a big city hospital and gets a job in the place to be near her. While she inadvertantly turns the hospital upside down with her hilarious mishaps, our folksy heroine falls for a handsome young doctor(Peter Fonda in his film debut). No classic, but this is a warm, funny, and occasionally touching movie. Sandra Dee is an absolute joy to watch; this was her second and last turn as the TAMMY character, her first was TAMMY TELL ME TRUE(1961) which was a sequel to TAMMY AND THE BACHELOR(1957) starring Debbie Reynolds.

Not as beautiful as "Tammy Tell Me True", but even funnier.

Tammy is an implausibly innocent country bumpkin who clashes with the modern world. She has derogatory things to say about Shakespeare, Mozart, Psychology, Colleges, modern art, sleeping pills, freeways, conformism, phoniness.

Tammy: "You mean you been livin' with yourself all your life without ever knowing what you are???"

Sandra Dee is brilliant in her role - and it is truly hers.

Much of the movie's delight is in Tammy's ungrammatical speech. She says glorious things like "Be you gonna or be ya ain't" (Will you or won't you?). She asks a man "Bein't ya the dumb waiter?" and he sternly replies: "No, I be the chief of staff!"

I love the Tammy films, but one problem with them is continuity. In the first film, "Tammy and the Bachelor", it looks absolutely certain that she was about to marry her love (Leslie Nielsen). But in the second film he was gone and apparently lost interest in this delightful young woman. And, by the end of "Tammy Tell Me True", she was head over heels in love with a gorgeous and sweet professor (John Gavin)....and yet when "Tammy and the Doctor" begins he's gone! This is much more a problem for me than having Debbie Reynolds play Tammy in the first film and Sandra Dee in the next two.

This movie picks up after the second film. Tammy's good friend and companion, Annie (Beulah Bondi), is ill and needs to get surgery. However, she is awfully close to Tammy and Tammy wants to accompany her to the hospital. The hospital isn't about to let Tammy stay there and they come up with a compromise...to let her work at the hospital in order to be close to Annie.

So is it any good? Well, yes. But it isn't nearly as heart-warming and sweet as the previous two films. Much of it, in my opinion, is due to this film emphasizing comedy more than romance. Plus, I still kept worrying about her two previous boyfriends! Overall, a good film but not quite up to the very high standards set by the previous two movies.

By the way, Imdb mentions that this was Beulah Bondi's last film. This is not such as sad thing, as she lived another 17 years and made several notable television appearances during this period.

Tammy And The Doctor was the big screen debut of Peter Fonda and back in his Easy Rider rebel days he referred to it as Tammy And The Schmuckface. I wonder know in his late 70s how Peter Fonda feels about the film?

It was the last of the big screen Tammy films, she would go on to a short lived television series with Debbie Watson. Sandra Dee plays Tammy Tyree of the Mississippi Delta a southern fried version of the little miss fixit roles that Deanna Durbin also did for Universal Studios back in the day.

In this film Beulah Bondi the rich old lady to whom Tammy has become attached is taken ill. Specialist Macdonald Carey is in from Los Angeles and he recommends that Bondi have open heart surgery which he will perform. Like every other man of all generations Carey gets taken with her and thinks she will be an asset in giving Bondi a proper attitude toward the surgery.

So Tammy gets taken on at the big LA hospital and as she always does her naivete but also her strong common sense wins over everyone around her eventually. Nurse Alice Pearce becomes her best friend. But her real conquest is young doctor Peter Fonda who is a protégé of Carey's.

Seeing her going off with Peter Fonda also makes me wonder what happened to Leslie Nielsen and John Gavin in the previous two Tammy films. Or if there were more Tammy films how many of the male sex she would have endeared herself to.

One does wonder how Peter Fonda views the film today. For me it's pleasant easy to take entertainment. Tammy does kind of grow on you.

In the final movie in the Tammy trilogy Sandra Dee once again stars and calamities ensue. Tammy's houseboatmate Mrs. Call falls ill and needs an operation. Tammy tags along and gets a job at the hospital to be close by and keep Mrs. Call's spirits up. But of course due to Tammy's naive nature trouble follows wherever she goes and it's a wonder no one dies due to some of the mishaps. This time Tammy falls for a doctor played by Peter Fonda. Bonus points for spotting Adam West as a doctor!