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Although she is little known today, Deanna Durbin was one of the most popular stars of the 1930s, a pretty teenager with a perky personality and a much-admired operatic singing voice. This 1937 was her first major film, and it proved a box-office bonanza for beleaguered Universal Studios.

THREE SMART GIRLS concerns three daughters of a divorced couple who rush to their long-unseen father when their still-faithful mother reveals he may soon remarry--with the firm intention of undermining his gold-digger girlfriend and returning him to their mother. Although the story is slight, the script is witty and the expert cast plays it with a neat screwball touch. Durbin has a pleasing voice and appealing personality, and such enjoyable character actors as Charles Winninger, Alice Brady, Lucile Watson, and Mischa Auer round out the cast. A an ultra-light amusement for fans of 1930s film.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

It has been said that Deanna Durbin invented teenagery. This first film was one of the best. The humorous story presented a delightful 14 year old Deanna, a little beauty with a gorgeous voice, as the "Miss Fixit" in a family split by divorce. For plot summary, see other IMDb entries, but quickly Deanna and her two older sisters plan to go to America from Switzerland to prevent their father from remarrying. With an excellent supporting cast especially Barbara Read and Nan Grey as the sisters, good direction and editing, the film succeeds in captivating one even on subsequent viewings. Of Deanna's three songs, only "Il Bacio" is from the classical repertoire, but when she sings it in that police station scene, the film's place in history is assured. At least it was for this viewer who at the age of 15 was smitten for life with both Deanna and classical music. One of the many nice touches that occur throughout THREE SMART GIRLS is the brief glimpse of the drunk stretching his neck for a final glimpse of Deanna as the cops hustle him by! One unfortunate result of the success of this film was that subsequent writers for Durbin vehicles became locked into the "Miss Fixit" theme, which quickly became stale. Deanna herself never did. Her stature as an actress is more questionable than her charisma, which she certainly had. It seems to me that, like many another film personality, she substituted "naturalness" for the histrionic ability that she lacked. The ploy worked well for 21 feature films.

MGM's loss was Universal Studio's gain when Louis B. Mayer sold Deanna Durbin's contract to Carl Laemmle and Universal gave her a grand debut in Three Smart Girls. The three are the Craig sisters played by Nan Grey, Barbara Read, and Durbin as the youngest and the one with the musical talent. But all three are on a mission to bring their mother and father back together.

The girls are vacationing in Switzerland when word comes that dear old dad who's been divorced from mom for years is about to be married again. Back to New York come the sisters to save father Charles Winninger from the clutches of mercenary Binnie Barnes and her even more mercenary mother Alice Brady.

While on the mission Grey and Read get themselves some romantic involvement also with Dusty King and Ray Milland. It gets a bit complicated though when Read thinks that Milland is a no account count that King hired to woo Barnes away from Winninger. Actually Milland is a titled gent, the guy that King hired was Mischa Auer.

In the first of her many roles in the guise, Deanna Durbin plays little Miss Fix-it and solves everybody's problems in the end with a few songs to go with it. It was a formula that worked well for Universal, pulling the studio back from inherent bankruptcy. Abbott&Costello would later make it turn a profit.

Three Smart Girls got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Sound and Best Original Story. The fashions and mores of the time place it firmly in the Depression Thirties. I doubt it could ever be made today again.

Where would you find a voice like Deanna Durbin's?

This film is so old I never realized how young looking Ray Milland looked in 1936, I remember him playing in a great film, "Lost Weekend". Ray plays the role of Michael Stuart, who is a very rich banker. There are three girls in this picture who are not very happy about their father and mother separating and they find out their father is going to get married to a young blonde who is a gold digger only looking for a rich sugar daddy. They hire a man to pose as a very rich Count, his name is Count Ariszted, (Misha Auer) who is drunk all the time and is penniless and gives plenty of comic laughs throughout the picture. Deanna Durbin, (Penny Craig) surprised everyone when she was booked in a police station and told the chief of police that she was an opera star and then Penny starts singing with the most fantastic soprano voice I have every heard, the entire police department and convicts started applauding, which was a very entertaining and enjoyable scene from this film. This is Deanna Durbin's first film debut and she became an instant success over night and went on to become a great movie star with Universal Studios after leaving MGM.

About 20 years ago, I managed to watch the beginning of this movie on AMC-when it was still commercial-free and didn't edit its films for content-but turned it off or changed the channel after Deanna Durbin's first number. So now I've seen the whole thing on Netflix DVD and I can honesty say I enjoyed most of it. Initially, I thought the dialogue was being presented too fast for me to understand everything going on but I caught on eventually and warmed to Ms. Durbin's presence as the young impulsive teen. The women who play her sisters are also pretty appealing and there's a nice comic performance by Charles Winninger as their father. Mischa Auer is also funny as a drunken bum who's supposed to pose as a count. While I don't consider myself an opera fan, Ms. Durbin is pretty entertaining when she sings. In summary, Three Smart Girls is a pretty funny movie that's worth a look.