Yes, My Darling Daughter

It's clear that Warners was attempting to repeat the same success they had with "Four Daughters" right down to casting a number of the same actors. Rolland Young and Fay Bainter (along with the wonderful May Robson) are among my favorite character actors of the era.

Priscilla Lane is just fine, but Jeffrey Lynn really isn't a particular good actor. Yes, he was fine in "All This and Heaven Too", but he's dull as dishwater in "A Letter to Three Wives". Joseph Mankiewicz referred to him as a "leaner" - a weak actor. He was right.

All in all, it's a very watchable Warners programmer of the late 1930's. I can think better ways to waste my time.

Jeffrey Lynn gets a real bum rap by one reviewer on this site. He has an impossible part to play here, in which he's subjected to Priscilla Lane's endless platitudinous chatter. It's certainly refreshing to see a liberated woman in an old movie, but Lane's character is positively emasculating. Under the circumstances, Lynn does very well. Based on a popular play, this film was considered racy in 1939. Seen today, it's so innocuous, it's almost offensive! Needless to say, Lane retains her virginity even though she goes away for the weekend with boyfriend Lynn.

Forget the sociological implications, however, and you have a reasonably witty entertainment, successfully "opened up" from its stage origins.

Based on a stage play and it really shows. (The characters in this movie talk and talk endlessly.)The situation, with our plucky heroine going off for the weekend with a boyfriend who is soon to leave for an overseas job, just might be seen as racy for the late thirties. It is made pretty clear early on that Priscilla Lane would just never do that sort of thing and not return as pure as the newly fallen snow, but everybody in this movie has to talk about it - her mom, her aunt, her dad, her grandmother (the hammy May Robson), the mom's old boyfriend from way back when (played by Roland Young - and what is he doing here anyway? His character's presence makes no sense at all)- and the quality of the talk is moralizing and dreadfully dull. (The movie is not helped at all by the presence of Jeffrey Lynn, just about the stodgiest and dullest young leading man this side of Ronald Reagan.) Priscilla Lane could be genuinely charming at times, but she doesn't have a chance against a lousy script and heavy-handed direction. See it once, if you really have to see have see every movie that Priscilla Lane ever made....

Married Ann Murray invited writer Titus Jaywood to spend the weekend with her family in New Brighton. Ann's daughter Ellen Murray (Priscilla Lane) is determined to spend time with boyfriend Douglas Hall before he heads off to Europe for a new job.

All the liberated woman and dating logistics feel very dated and unknowable. I kept thinking that this gathering would be a lot better for a holiday. The family, the boyfriend, the invited guest can all gather for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It should be Thanksgiving. It's the missing element. One of the issues with the comedy genre is that they often exist in their own times. Physical comedies can transcend time, but written comedies often have issues. This has the dated problem.

While this story of an unmarried couple's weekend together is obviously tame by today's standards, Yes, My Darling Daughter does have a moment or two that is a bit on the racier side. Well, at least for the time it was made.

Led by the beautiful and unfairly underrated 'Lane, Priscilla' (qv), this movie has a good ensemble cast, with maybe the exception of Jeffrey Lynn.

While Lynn has been likable in his other movies with Priscilla Lane, i. e. _Four Daughters (1938)_ (qv) and _Roaring Twenties, The (1939)_ (qv), he doesn't come across as the most likeable character. Or the brightest, either. In other words, if Priscilla Lane asked me to spend a weekend with her, platonic or otherwise, I think I would show a little more enthusiasm than he did!

Anyway, Yes, My Darling Daughter is worth watching, thanks in no small part to the aforementioned Miss Lane.