Janie

For me, the real star of this movie is Clare Foley, Janie's seven-year-old little sister. She is tremendously funny, ALMOST at a level equal to child actress Margaret O'Brien (Noted for the terrific movie, Meet Me In St. Louis.) Sadly, Clare Foley died at only 39 years of age. A DuckDuckGo search gives little information about her. As far as I can tell, she was only in the two Janie movies.

In an effort to compete with the popular family pictures being produced by MGM during the World War II era, like the Andy Hardy series, studio mogul Jack Warner charged his staff with creating a wholesome entertainment which would incorporate patriotism, small-town Americana and romance into an audience-pleasing film. The result was Janie (1944), a light romantic comedy about a 17-year-old year who decided to support the war effort by opening her home to every enlisted man stationed nearby. The accent is on humor in Janie with the central premise of adolescent girls developing crushes on visiting soldiers being treated in a charmingly naive way, devoid of any lewd suggestiveness. We will briefly see a very young singer Andy Williams (with his brothers) providing entertainment at a party scene.

Janie became one of Warner's biggest hits of 1944 grossing nearly two million dollars domestically! Pleased with Janie's success, Warner reassembled most of the cast for the inevitable follow-up, Janie Gets Married (1946), but replaced the engaging Reynolds with the studio's favorite all-American (Drop Dead Gorgeous) girl, Joan Leslie, (Joan Leslie's best role is in the movie, The Male Animal.) Also in Janie Gets Married is the very attractive Dorothy Malone.

The movies (Janie and Janie Gets married comes on the same disc.) comes on a burned (purple) DVD, not a longer lasting pressed (Silver) DVD.

This was a very comical film starring Edward Arnold, (Charles Conway) who owns a newspaper in Hortonville and he has two daughters Janie Conway, (Joyce Reynolds) who is a pretty teenage girl of 18 years and she has a little sister named Elsbeth Conway, (Clare Foley) who is seven years of age and a great actress in this picture. Janie is a very liked girl in her town and she has many girl friends and one boy friend she grew up with. Charles Conway finds out that the Army are going to be stationed in their town and he is not in favor of this idea and writes editorials about this subject in his paper. The Army does arrive and this creates plenty of problems for the local town folks. However, Janie is always finding ways to have parties and eventually she gets involved with an entire base marching into her house for a party. Clare Foley gave an outstanding performance along with Edward Arnold, Robert Hutton, (Pfc Dick Lawrence). This was a film made during World War II and was a morale builder for the American Fighting men and was very well produced.

Janie is a pleasant family comedy that had its origins as a successful play on Broadway running 642 performances during the 1942-44 seasons on Broadway. Warner Brothers bought the film rights and brought the film to the movie-going public the same year the play closed on Broadway. It certainly reflects more innocent times.

Young Janie is your typical teen of the times, having romantic thoughts mostly instigated by the fact there is an army camp just been built in her sleepy little Midwest town of Hortonville. All those soldiers around may excite her, but for her father Edward Arnold town newspaper publisher and former doughboy from the last war who remembers what soldiers are like, they're oversexed and over here and the sooner we get them off to war the easier he'll feel.

Janie played by Joyce Reynolds gets the idea to have an intimate gathering for her girl friends and their soldier dates at home and gets Arnold and her mother Ann Harding out for the evening. But her civilian high school sweetheart Richard Erdman gets on the horn and pretty soon Janie's got a regular USO going at her house for the evening. Worst of all her own soldier beau Robert Hutton is stuck on a bus with her little sister Clare Foley. Hutton by the way looks like a pale imitation of Jimmy Stewart.

Janie got an Oscar nomination for Editing, but the highlight of the film for me is the lone musical number Keep Your Powder Dry performed in Busby Berkley style by the partygoers which include the Williams Brothers Quartet with that youngest Williams brother Andy who had a solo career of sorts, future head Mouseketeer Jimmy Dodd, and even Hattie McDaniel who is Arnold's and Harding's maid. As usual Hattie gets some devastating lines.

Although the mores of the times have changed and Janie has a most old fashioned look, I hope someone put a print of this film in a time capsule. The vacuum will keep it pristine and some folks in the future will have an idea of the American home front in 1944.

Now we know how America won the war. There's more sheer bounce and energy in this 1944 family comedy than in the Nazi invasion of Poland. The gag lines and wisecracks fly faster than speeding bullets, while director-General Raoul Walsh cranks up the movie engine to jet speed. Note the constant movement inside the house as people are always going here and there. Shrewd move-- adapting a film from a stage play is like moving into a a coat closet if you're not careful. Not much of a plot-- something about soldier-boys coming to steal the local girls from their highschool sweethearts, creating a big commotion at the same time.

But who cares, with such a great cast right down to bratty little Elspeth who gets all the good lines and does nothing without being paid. Already she's learned our great economic lesson. The trouble is Dad can't figure out the younger generation because he's forgotten his own, while Mom can't seem to figure out which service uniform to wear. But that's alright because she looks good in all of them. And of course there's Janie, all spunk and glow, with her own army of boy-hungry pals. Together, they keep the phones buzzing with enough animal pizazz to light up a defense factory.

Check out the cutting-edge teens of the day-- taking a blanket on a "smooching" date with just a few hundred others. Now Dad's in an uproar when he finds out, but that's nothing compared to what he and Mom find after coming home late. There's the sailor in the bedroom, the soldier in the bathroom, and the wall gone flat in the living-room. Naturally, there's an innocent explanation for everything. And, of course, the invading servicemen were nothing but gentlemen the whole time.

Hard to believe that boys like these were dying by the thousands on the beach-heads of Normandy and Saipan. None of that here. After all, it's the Janie's of the world, safe and shielded, that the boys were fighting for. Even if it's just 90 minutes, what a great escape from all those other horrors. This is small town America, about to undergo a sea change. You can hear the waves lapping already. It's really not just the army that's come to Hortonville; it's the outside world. And all the malt shops, "smooching" parties, and small town innocence will never be the same once the war ends. This is not only a darn good little comedy-- but also a darn good little time capsule worth preserving.

I usually find movies of this era a little too slow or dull, this one kept me. It was humorous and well paced, nostalgic. Nothing too serious, but not too goofy either. Of course the girls were all immaculately dressed and the costumes and scripting for phrases was excellent. The premise was the same as what they use to build sitcoms today, Small town girl has beau that she has grown up with, romantic older fellow in uniform sweeps her off her feet, girl is torn between childhood ties and grownup romance...girl plans small affair while her parents are out, huge crowd shows up, party ensues and is broken up by the police and all of the characters still love each other in the end; all of the little side plots are happily resolved and that's the end. Good family film. (doesn't Janie look remarkably like Geena Davis?!?)