An Old-Fashioned Girl

When her father goes broke, spunky daughter Gloria Jean goes out and tries to earn a living. This earns her the admiration of Jimmy Lydon, but the scorn of society ladies.

Arthur Dreifuss is remembered as a writer and director for Monogram, PRC, Sam Katzman, and in the 1960s, cheap "hippie" movies, but when he had the chance he was quite capable of turning out inexpensive but very pleasant musicals, like this one based on a Louisa May Alcott story. The numbers are a mix of long-out-of-copyright numbers -- Miss Jean sings a lovely version of "Beautiful Dreamer. Quite obviously cheaply produced for Eagle-Lion -- which would shortly swallow United Artists -- it's a charming little black-and-white number.

Projected a 16mm print of this cool old picture last night for the third time since I bought the print. I enjoyed it very much! Stephen Foster gets a bad rap sometimes, but "Beautiful Dreamer" is a beautiful song with well thought out lyrics, so was "Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair" Gloria Jean sure can belt out the songs! One of the very best moments in this picture was when violin virtuoso Saundra Berkova, she was only 18 years old when they filmed her scene, and man what a talented chick! She was incredible and just jams through Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto! Interestingly she was involved in a marijuana party bust in the 1950's in Hollywood! Being a former 420 head myself, I thought that was kind of cool that she may have smoked pot! Apparently no charges were brought against her and she was released! I couldn't believe that I was watching the actress who would later play Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies show! Come to find out that Irene Ryan was a very talented actress and when she was a young woman she was very nice looking! Of course Elinor Donahue was so cute, and popped off with some great lines in the flick! Elinor and actor Jimmy Lydon may be the only living cast members of this picture! The pictures director Arthur Dreifuss started a production company to produce this picture and one other film under the banner of Vinson Pictures, "Shamrock Hill" also released in the same year of 1949! (I also have a 16mm print of that picture as well and I love them both!) I wouldn't be surprised if the 35mm cut nitrate negatives and soundtrack rolls were left to decay in some storage unit someplace? Frances Rafferty was a babe! So was Rosemary La Planche and Shirley Mills! Everybody in this picture was great! So if you're not a jaded fool, check out this picture! Best part, no cell phones, computers, dumb tattooed idiots, dumb girls with colored hair, car chases, rap, rock, new country music, Covid-19, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden - just good old fashioned fun! Damn it I think I left my Covid-19 mask in the car! Can't wait for the US government to shoot us all up with an unproven vaccine, maybe I'll die! Hooray!

In the late 1930s and into the 1940s, two amazingly talented singers were all the rage in films. The most famous of them today was Judy Garland, though for a while Deanna Durbin was a bigger draw and saved Universal Studios from financial ruin (as did Abbott & Costello). Just a bit after their success, Gloria Jean arrived in Hollywood and like these other two, possessed an amazing voice for a young girl. But, unlike the other two, her fame was short-lived and today she's hardly remembered. This is no slam against her...she just didn't catch on with audiences like the other two...and the studio already had Miss Durbin under contract.

"An Old-Fashioned Girl" is one of Gloria Jean's outings at the tail end of her movie career. Here Gloria is an adult and it's nice to see her in such a role.

The story is set in 1870 and Polly (Gloria Jean) comes from an impoverished middle-class family. So she did what any sane person would do...she went to work. However, this was something women from her class just didn't do...and her providing music lessons was quite a shock to others. As for the folks around her, they mostly seemed like dull idlers....folks you wouldn't want to know or with which you'd like to be associated! And, their reaction to her and romance are the main themes of this movie.

I liked this film better than the juvenile roles Jean played in the early 40s. It seemed less dependent on her singing and more on acting...a major plus. An enjoyable film overall and worth your time.

By the way, if you watch the film, look for a young Elinor Donahue as well as Irene Ryan....old TV standbys of the 50s-70s. Ryan, by the way, overacts terribly a few times.

The movie more or less follows the storyline of Louisa May Alcott's book of the same name, although the movie starts about a third of the way through the book, skips over some things and over-condenses others, particularly the last chapter, which is reduced to a few lines of dialog in the movie. The story is sat in the 1870's among the snooty-rich of Boston. Polly Milton (Jean), the poor relative to a rich family, refuses to enter their circle, preferring to make her way as a music teacher. After much ado, Polly serves as a relatively young Miss Fixit, patching up things here and there. If you like the movie, do check out the book.

The acting is first rate, especially 11 year old Elinor Donahue (of Father Knows Best fame), who is hilarious as the wise-cracking Maud, poking fun at her snobbish relatives.

Songs for Jean include "Beautiful Dreamer", "The Travel Song" (written for this movie by Charles Previn), part of Schubert's "Where" (arranged by Charles Previn), and parts of other songs (such as an abbreviated "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). Jean, Donahue, and Frances Rafferty sing a song called "Kitchen Serenade" which threatens at times to break into a gadget-added number typical to those performed by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. Jean's voice is beautiful, as usual, and while the highest notes aren't tested as they were early in her career, her lower register is much fuller and more mature.

There's also an excerpt from the third movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, performed by then 18 year old Sandra Berkova. Ms. Berkova (who was related to conductor Lorin Maazel) was a child prodigy who later faded into obscurity. She only plays the work modestly well here, and her inclusion in the movie was at the adamant insistence of director Arthur Dreifess, who was supposedly infatuated with Berkova (although not in a romantic way). The camera-work during the concerto is, to say the least, weird.

I haven't seen this movie on TV in over thirty years. Finding it can be difficult, except that you can, as usual, buy a copy from Gloria Jean herself at her website. IMDb policy forbids the posting of URL's, but you can find the site with your favorite search engine and the words "Gloria Jean Child Star" (or by putting those four words together, and adding a "." and "com" to the end).