The Farmer Takes a Wife

Typical 1950's Hollywood production. Costumes are not period, zippers, high heeled pumps and pony tails were not part of the 1850's. The men wear dinner jackets with bow ties and everyone's outfit is sparkling clean and starched, despite the fact that they have been working all day plowing, washing and cleaning. Penciled in eyebrows, eyeliner and lipstick a hundred years too early. Betty Grable still looks like a a pin up girl, and Dale Robertson has a pompadour hair style, also why are they using southern accents in Rome NY? This movie is cute but not Betty Grable's best picture by far. Lovely 1950's period piece in long skirts.

A career-killing movie for Betty Grable, who is wasted, along with everyone except Eddie Foy Jr. in this prettified musical version of the movie that made Henry Fonda a star. Dale Robertson plays the farmer, who is a moron, Thelma Ritter is wasted and some fake-looking scenery still leaves one mystified at how people can live in riverfront saloons and on farms and know nothing at all of the facts of life or the baser side of human nature -- it must be those perfectly maintained canal boats with red-striped awnings they travel in. The songs are also pretty poor, including an ode to Schenectady that did not make Rodgers and Hammerstein jealous.

While none of Gable's starring musicals are likely to make any top-100 lists, most of them have fairly good musical numbers and enough plot and comedy relief to get you from one standard to the next. This one doesn't.

"The Farmer Takes a Wife" is a charming, forgettable piece of fluff of the "Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl back" school of film musical. Fox musicals were almost always rather forgettable, with their insipid songs and frequently bad singing. However, they were also bright and colorful, since Fox used Technicolor longer and more frequently than the "Tiffany" studio, MGM. "The Farmer Takes a Wife" is especially charming in costume, art and set decoration.

Betty Grable is, well, Betty Grable, and if you adore her (and I do), you're likely to adore "The Farmer Takes a Wife". Betty's ably supported by Dale Robertson, John Carroll, Eddie Foy, Jr. and, the always wonderful Thelma Ritter. I won't pretend it's a great movie, or even a good movie, but "The Farmer Takes a Wife" is a "Betty Grable" movie, and that's good enough for me. I give "The Farmer Takes a Wife" a "6".

This film is one of the Hollywood musicals that marked the end of a particular genre-the romantic, comical romp filled with solid songs sung well by stars like Judy Garland, Doris Day, and Alice Faye. Based on a Broadway play and a 1935 nonmusical film, this half-hearted attempt is more insipid than romantic or comical. Betty Grable, whose charms I have always found elusive, is miscast as a cook on a boat on the Erie Canal, with Dale Robertson (not a great musical talent) as the guy she falls for. Although they are written by the great Harold Arlen and Dorothy Fields, the songs are forgettable. The highlight of the film for me was watching an uncredited Gwen Verdon dance with Grable in the splashy tune "We're in Business."

I would lke to give this a 6 but I just cannot even though I am a big Grable fan, Also a fan of Robertson but this was not his best performance by far. Maybe he felt as out of his element as I perceived him to be.

However the weak script and scenes lets the two of them have several moments that the songs couldn't completely ruin.

I did burn this to DVD because I really do want to have a complete library of both the stars.

The costumes were nice and the color was nice and the 4 major actors/actresses did as much as you could hope for in a weak vehicle.

Watch it but don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed.

As I think on it a 5 might be a little high but I will stick witn it