A Date with Judy

This film is a real riot of charm, song, wit and dazzling color. This kind of movie-making has been dead for a very long time, to my everlasting regret. Scotty Beckett and Jane Powell stand out. Unfortunately, Carmen Miranda is made to sing Hollywood's version of Brazilian songs, rather than the authentic stuff. It is disappointing that foreigners should so often be the object of amusement in American films. They are not allowed any dignity. However, Miranda makes the best of what she is given, and shines like a star.

The fun is wholesome, but not too wholesome. The plot involves suspected adultery by a venerable father!!! Plots and subplots are gloriously interwoven. Every time I see this film I am reassured that there IS such a thing as perfection.

The music is nice and the acting is excellent. While I like Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor was positively gorgeous, I'm a huge fan of Wallace Beery. When we look back and consider great actors, he is very underrated. It offers a look back at the family unit of the time compared to what exists now.

1948 produced some of MGM's top teenagers to movie audiences. Put them in a gorgeous technicolor musical comedy, add some veteran adults and you have one of the best of it's time.

Jane Powell, lovely voice and all, plays Judy. Her best friend is the now-sophisticated Elizabeth Taylor, all of 15 years old, looking absolutely lovely that you know she's headed for glamorous grownup roles down the road. The camera loved her. Then there's Scotty Beckett, having started his career at the age of four, now in the awkward teens, doing one of his best performances as Judy's date. Sad he died such a tragic death at an early age.

Scatter many film veterans to the likes of Wallace Berry and Selena Royale as Judy's parents, Robert Stack, young and handsome as Elizabeth's love interest, Leon Ames as Elizabeth and Scotty's dad, Clinton Sundberg as the butler to Ames, Xavier Cugat and his band with Carmen Miranda his star attraction, and one of her last films, and George Cleveland as Judy's Grandpa.

A trivia note: watch the scene with Judy waiting to be picked up for the prom. Early in the picture. Grandpa enters and actually kicks the dog to make his entrance. I had to rewind to believe what I saw. The dog also yelped when he did. And this is the guy who later played all those "Lassie" TV programs. Shame on you George!

All in all a charming and lighthearted film with the beauty of Taylor, the voice of Powell and the comedy of Beckett. Jane sings "A Most Unusual Day" and "Love Is Where You Find It".

"A Date with Judy" is a nostalgic look at mid-20th century America when most of the world was at peace, or at least enjoying a calm. It's a picture of middle and upper middle-class white America after World War II. The film is set in Santa Barbara, California in 1948. Rock 'n roll hasn't yet burst on the scene. It was the sunset years of the corner drugstore with its soda fountain where teens met after high school. That's just before drive-in restaurants came on the scene in the1950s. Kids still dressed modestly and nicely. The bobbysoxer boom was just around the corner.

This is one of the lighter types of comedy-musicals that MGM made with various young stars after the series of Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland (1938-1946). The big musicals, of all the studios, were to come in the next two decades. That, despite the demise of the studio system.

This is a cute comedy romance with Jane Powell singing a few songs and she and 16-year-old Elizabeth Taylor organizing a high school musical program. Powell is Judy Foster and Taylor is Carol Pringle. Powell was three years older than Taylor, and although Taylor got her start in films younger than Powell, it was Powell's singing that propelled her career in musicals. Of course, Taylor's star would take off with excellent dramatic roles. Later Powell films were much better, but this is a light and fun film with a couple of tremendous young entertainers very early in their careers.

The most unusual casting for this film has to Wallace Beery as Judy's father, Melvin Colner Foster. The usually gruff, tough, and often nasty Beery actually pulls it off as a caring dad and nice guy in this film.

Carmen Miranda, known as the Brazilian Bombshell, adds some spice and humor to the story, as well as a tune. And, the frequently paired Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra (with Miranda) provide most of the music.

"A Date with Judy" is an enjoyable film that also gives an accurate peak at the culture of the time, place and people of the late 1940s in much of America.

Here are a couple lines from the film.

Judy Foster, "My father seems to think that his fish can get along very well without my help."

Caro Pringle, "I finally convinced father to let you and Oogie try out on his radio station." Judy, "You did? Oh, that's stinky super."

Sweet comedy, a time capsule of teen-hood in the movies in the 40's with wonderful music courtesy of Xavier Cugat and his band.

Jane Powell is charmingly pert, full of youthful exuberance something she excelled at. According to her autobiography though that very spryness became a type of prison limiting her casting and when musicals declined in popularity made it impossible for her to transition to other types of pictures.

Someone who certainly didn't suffer the same issue is Elizabeth Taylor, very young and very beautiful, this was one of her first roles that flirted with adulthood.

The doomed Scotty Beckett, a major child star throughout his youth, plays Jane's gangly boyfriend, the unfortunately named Oogie, struggling with puberty in one of the roles attempting to ease him into adult roles. He couldn't make the leap and within the year started the long slide into trouble with the law and drug addiction that ended in his suicide two decades later at 38.

In one of his last roles Wallace Beery is full of warm understanding as Jane's father in a departure from his usual bluster, he and Selena Royale at well matched as a long married couple.

Lastly Carmen Miranda is a delight as always, her clothes and hats are outlandish, take special note of her shoes and wonder how she could possibly walk in them! One quibble, the Technicolor is unusually garish and at times the cast practically glows orange.