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Recent divorcée Mary Astor (Edith Farham) and daughter Brenda, spend Christmas at a fashionable mountain hotel - ski lodge. At the same time, Melvin Douglas (Stephan Blake) a long time widower arrives awaiting his ten-year-old son, also to spend their Christmas holidays together. Brenda is a man hater, apparently because daddy left her and mommy. When Steve's son (Tommy) arrives both children take an immediate dislike of one another -- to the point of physically beating each other up! Both children can't stand the fact that Edith and Steve are becoming attracted to each other, and both are determined to derail any chance of Steve and Edith becoming a couple. In most romantic 1930's comedies kids are not as mischievous or in fact, as delinquent as this pair is, but it's done in funny ways that keeps the kids from becoming obnoxious. A good cast with fine supporting actors drives this film merrily along. Columbia Pictures was good at making comedies. This is worth a look, if you like that genre.

I saw this movie in 1954 as a child, and frankly, at that time it seemed to me to be both

amateurish and boring. I knew that Jack Webb had written, produced and directer it, and that's usually a pretty good prescription for a failure. Fifty-five years later, I still feel the same. This motion picture was made only because "Dragnet" (the TV series) was popular enough to draw in an audience, or at least, I'm guessing that the folks putting up the money thought so . If in fact "Dragnet" made a profit (I have my doubts) it was only because it was made on a very slim budget. What the movie audiences got for their money was just a thirty minute TV show that had been blown up -- filmed in color -- and little more. "Dragnet" was like a lot of films or TV shows that caught on at a particular time. They were different, rather than they were particularly good. "Dargnet" isn't something that holds up over time; rather, it becomes a curiosity, something that has to be defended. Several comments have have been made that this film reflected both the 1950's and Joseph R. McCarthy. Well, actually this film reflected Jack Webb, and his conception of movie making. If you see Joe McCarty here, it's because you want to see Joe McCarthy. This movie is not political unless you just think that policing is just a reflection of closet fascism.

I'm guessing that this short was made for MGM as an experiment to gain experience with full color film. Or maybe it was produced by the Techincolor Corp. to show off the quality of their product. Earlier color films lacked the spectrum of vibrant colors, but this film was beautiful. I did not know how good Technicolor was in 1935. Another thing that was interesting was that unlike most Technicolor films of the 1930's, this was not a costume picture. We saw many scenes of ordinary people eating, dancing, or lounging around a swimming pool in all kinds of dress. In other words, it was a full color look into the past. I haven't mentioned the script because, there really wasn't one. The band music was nothing special, so too, were the vocalists. Several comedy bits ranged from corny to plain bad. I might add that movie buffs would enjoy seeing shots of various film stars that were part of the crowd.