Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

Very light-hearted movie with many funny situations. Not really believable, but fun.

A charming comedy which unfortunately has not been released on video or DVD. Both Gail Russell and Diana Lynn give lovely performances. It is a shame Gail did so few comedies as she had a wonderful style for it. The sequel was not as good and that is a shame because it could have rivaled the Henry Aldrich series. The sequence with the "geezer" and the sequence where they are stuck on top of Notre Dame at night are hilarious. the last scene with Beulah Bondi on the ship sailing back home from Europe has a wonderful kicker for the end of the film. Paramount should release this on DVD. it is a lost treasure.

Cornelia (Gail Russell) and Emily (Diana Lynn) decide to go on a trip to Europe as Cornelia discovers that Avery (James Brown) is travelling there. On the ship, Cornelia meets Avery while Lynn meets Tom (Bill Edwards) and the four become travelling partners. They disembark in England and visit France before making their way back home.

There is no plot in this story. It's a sequence of incidents that take you from the beginning to the end. The acting is pretty wooden in parts, especially from Brown, Edwards and Russell. The acting honours go to Charles Ruggles (Otis Skinner), Dorothy Gish (Mrs Skinner) and Lynn. Brown is a typically brainless, lug-headed American and Edwards is even worse! The film alternates between funny moments and drawn out scenes.

In the late 1920s Cornelia Otis Skinner and her friend Emily Kimborough decided to travel to England and France for a vacation. It was the first time they went abroad. Cornelia was the daughter of the notable stage star character actor Otis Skinner, and he agreed to their plans because he would be going to England with his wife shortly afterward and could meet them there and return with them. After the trip was over, the two friends wrote a book THERE HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY about the trip. It became a best seller and was the basis for this 1944 film version.

It is a charming comic travelogue tale, bearing comparison to Jerome K. Jerome's THREE MEN IN A BOAT and ANITA LOOS' somewhat more cynical GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDS, except that this seems to be a true account (although Jerome's book has some elements of truth in it). We watch the two female Candides trying to prove themselves as capable of self-protection (and mutual protection) but not adverse to a little safe romance where they can.

But from the start things keep going awry for them. Nothing major, but all quite embarrassing. When Cornelia (Gail Russell) and Emily (Diana Lynn) are strolling the deck of the ocean liner taking in the cool evening air they pass wealthy, imperious, Alma Kruger. They happen to make a sharp turn while walking around Ms Kruger, and snag her loosely held pocketbook without Ms Kruger noticing. When they notice this they are in their cabin. Before they can return it safely, they hear that Ms Kruger is screaming about being robbed and wanting the thieves arrested. So they have one of their dilemmas: how to get the bag back to the old bat without getting arrested? It is like that (delightfully) throughout the story. When in a boarding house that is cheap but very old fashioned, they are told that if they want to get hot water they have to put a penny in the "Geyser" (pronounced "Geezer"). Naturally, when they see an elderly, crotchety gentleman near the washroom, they give him (the old geezer) a penny which he throws back at them.

Their misadventures follow them throughout the film, even involving their parents (Charlie Ruggles and - in a rare sound movie appearance - Dorothy Gish). Like many others they manage to get lost in the maze at Hampton Court, only managing to drag in Ruggles and Gish and others as well.

This was a nice film, too rarely seen on television (and not - apparently - on video or DVD). It also has it's period charms (the Skinners and Kimborough having dinner at a fancy restaurant, with Skinner/Ruggles ordering a bottle of Mumm's 1928 has a nice touch to it). I think that most of you would enjoy it.

It's important to note, going into this movie, that it's set in the 1920s. "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay" is based on a book of the same title by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. It's about their teenage adventures aboard ship and on a trip to Europe. But the book wasn't written until 1942, and the movie made in 1944. That was smack dab in the years of heaviest fighting during World War II. So, one wonders what audiences thought at the time. Here they were seeing scenes of gaiety and fun from around Europe - staged at the Paramount studios along with older film clips from Europe. But they were probably seeing newsreel films the same day of the war and devastation in Europe.

Well, that aside, this is a very good comedy travelogue of two young ladies who have mishap after mishap in their adventures. Their antics and miscues resemble the comedy scenes of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

The film is good and fared okay at the box office. But considering its best selling status as a book, Paramount might have expected it to do much better than below 50th with a box office of $6 million. There were many war-related films ahead of it that year, but also a number of fine dramas, crime and mystery films, and several comedy romances and musicals.

Gail Russell plays Cornelia Skinner, but already in just her fourth film and at age 20, she was drinking to steady her nerves. By the late 1940s, she was an alcoholic and she made only 10 films after that. She died of liver failure from acute chronic alcoholism in 1961. She was just 36 years old.

Here are a couple of the better lines from the film.

Mrs. Lamberton, played by Alma Kruger, "I never forget things." Miss Horn, played by Beulah Bondi, "How to you know, Ethel? People who forget things don't remember."

Hotel Clerk (Marek Windheim, uncredited), "We never worry about American girls. They know how to take care of themselves." Tom Newhall, "Not these girls." Avery Moore, "You said it."