L'extravagante héritière

Jack Lemmon, a new leading man in Hollywood in the 1950s and a younger June Allyson, straight from the M.G.M. Galaxy of musical stars made this a tuneful technicolour re-make of "It Happened One Night," for Columbia Pictures, ably assisted by Stubby Kaye, who never fails with a song; and all this under the direction of Dick Powell, who was married to June Allyson. There have been many post-war musicals released on Video and DVD and Columbia would do well to add this one to their DVD collection. It would be a fitting tribute to the multi-talented Jack Lemmon and Dick Powell who, himself, who was a song and dance man of the 1930s.

The last review I read at IMDb for this film stated that it starred a "young" June Allyson. Actually, she was 39, seven years older than her co-star, Jack Lemmon, and MUCH too old to play the part of a young heiress fleeing her father. This in a nutshell is what ruins the film (along with it being made into a musical for the 2nd time). Not that she didn't do her best, but that she was simply miscast.

Besides, it was foolish to try to recreate a film when the original was already perfect. They had nowhere to go but down. Apparently, Allyson's husband (director of the film) was trying to bank in on what he thought would be a sure thing. The film did indeed make money, but not one person who ever lived thought it was remotely as good as the original. If you haven't see the 1934 version called It Happened One Night, do yourself a favor and watch that one first. There's a very good chance you won't want to bother watching another version once you see how good Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert were. Incidentally, this film was remade into a musical once before during the 1940s, and again was quite inferior to the original. Perhaps Hollywood should learn to leave a good thing alone.

Evidently someone decided that since they had Technicolor available they could remake It Happened One Night. June Allyson, who was 39 when it was made, is dreadfully miscast as a rich brat who runs away from her father. Jack Lemmon tries his best to make it work, but even he must have cringed when singing the lame musical sequences. The black and white of the original mirrored the gloomy darkness of the Great Depression, and the rich brat's handing the last of their money to a hungry woman was a big turning point of the whole movie; none of that here. When will Hollywood producers learn that you can't remake perfection?

Pale imitation of It Happened One Night fails to capture the magic of the original, a fools errand to attempt in the first place, but is pleasant enough.

One of the problems is that Jack Lemmon and June Allyson share little chemistry, a vital component to the first film or any romantic comedy. Another is that June, 39 when this was made, while still very attractive is a bit mature to be convincing as a madcap runaway heiress. Debbie Reynolds, who was in her mid-twenties at the time would have been a better fit.

Scenes that crackled in the first just move the story along in this from place to place. Full of forgettable music which adds nothing to the original tale and a the high gloss look that was a signature of 50's cinema.

Well made but lacking the Capra touch.

I agree with most other reviewers here that this is a pale remake of a great classic film, though I found it mildly pleasant anyway.

Some of the other reviewers said why even try to remake a classic; why bother. What they don't understand is the big difference between our film culture and the pre-home video, pre-TCM, pre-repertory cinema era. Successful films were remade, because producers thought they were a good bet to make a profit. The studios usually already owned the story and had an effective script to base an update on; no need to pay for the rights to a play or novel, and they could probably pay less for an an updated script than for a new one. If the story was well received and made money years before, it had a better chance of being successful than untested material. The great majority of the potential audience for a remake had either never seen the older version, or had seen it many years before, usually just once, so the older version was just a faint memory. And much of the audience would be interested in seeing the story told with current stars, in color, and when it came in, in wide screen.

On another note, as of June 2015, TCM is still showing a poor quality print of the movie, the Cimemascope image cropped to something like 1:66 to 1 (it was not pan and scanned), color washed out (not remotely like what Technicolor print would have looked like when the film was new), mono soundtrack (the original was stereo according to IMDb). I imagine this is because it is not economically viable for Sony (owners of the Columbia film achieve) to do a new transfer.