Janie Tem Dois Namorados

Janie is a pleasant family comedy that had its origins as a successful play on Broadway running 642 performances during the 1942-44 seasons on Broadway. Warner Brothers bought the film rights and brought the film to the movie-going public the same year the play closed on Broadway. It certainly reflects more innocent times.

Young Janie is your typical teen of the times, having romantic thoughts mostly instigated by the fact there is an army camp just been built in her sleepy little Midwest town of Hortonville. All those soldiers around may excite her, but for her father Edward Arnold town newspaper publisher and former doughboy from the last war who remembers what soldiers are like, they're oversexed and over here and the sooner we get them off to war the easier he'll feel.

Janie played by Joyce Reynolds gets the idea to have an intimate gathering for her girl friends and their soldier dates at home and gets Arnold and her mother Ann Harding out for the evening. But her civilian high school sweetheart Richard Erdman gets on the horn and pretty soon Janie's got a regular USO going at her house for the evening. Worst of all her own soldier beau Robert Hutton is stuck on a bus with her little sister Clare Foley. Hutton by the way looks like a pale imitation of Jimmy Stewart.

Janie got an Oscar nomination for Editing, but the highlight of the film for me is the lone musical number Keep Your Powder Dry performed in Busby Berkley style by the partygoers which include the Williams Brothers Quartet with that youngest Williams brother Andy who had a solo career of sorts, future head Mouseketeer Jimmy Dodd, and even Hattie McDaniel who is Arnold's and Harding's maid. As usual Hattie gets some devastating lines.

Although the mores of the times have changed and Janie has a most old fashioned look, I hope someone put a print of this film in a time capsule. The vacuum will keep it pristine and some folks in the future will have an idea of the American home front in 1944.

According to TCM, "Janie" was made by Warner Brothers to try to cash in on the success of MGM's Andy Hardy series. Like the Hardy films, "Janie" features a goofy teenager, a well respected father who is often flummoxed, a mother, a sister and a housekeeper....though the father here, Charles Conway (Edward Arnold) seemed a bit more flummoxed as "Janie" seems a bit more likely to make it to second base than Andy.

Joyce Reynolds stars as the title character. She only made about a dozen films, so it's safe to say that the series never caught on. In fact, they only made one other film in the series...but with Joan Leslie playing the character. The film's main plot involves Janie's two romances--with her classmate, 'Scooper' as well as a soldier waiting to be shipped out, Dick.

To me, "Janie" is only a bit like the Hardy films. Yes, the family constellation is similar but much more shrill and chaotic...sort of like if the Hardys were all crack addicts!! So, the emphasis is less on charm and more on barraging the audience with crazy antics. I am not saying it's necessarily bad...but it's not the Hardys. Some of this is due to the super-bratty little sister...a plot device that wears thin after a while. The sing-a-long in the second half of the film is also problematic--making it seem more like an overtly patriotic film instead of the subtle Harady-style film. And, unlike Andy, you can imagine Janie making it way past first or second base--especially with all those lusty soldiers hanging about during the party sequence! Overall, the film is a moderately enjoyable time passer and nothing more.

Charles Conway (Edward Arnold) is tired of his daughter Janie Conway (Joyce Reynolds) and her flighty teenage ways. She and her friends get on Life Magazine for their blanket party. It's WWII and a new Army base is built nearby. All the girls are obsessed with the soldiers. Janie gets obsessed with Pfc. Dick Lawrence. His mother is a friend of her mother.

This is wartime and this is a bit teenager fun. I do wonder if these young girls would be acceptable during that time. I think they are supposed to be around fifteen. The big party is some chaotic screwball fun. There is a harmless triangle. It also works as propaganda to show some Americana for the troops.

This was a very comical film starring Edward Arnold, (Charles Conway) who owns a newspaper in Hortonville and he has two daughters Janie Conway, (Joyce Reynolds) who is a pretty teenage girl of 18 years and she has a little sister named Elsbeth Conway, (Clare Foley) who is seven years of age and a great actress in this picture. Janie is a very liked girl in her town and she has many girl friends and one boy friend she grew up with. Charles Conway finds out that the Army are going to be stationed in their town and he is not in favor of this idea and writes editorials about this subject in his paper. The Army does arrive and this creates plenty of problems for the local town folks. However, Janie is always finding ways to have parties and eventually she gets involved with an entire base marching into her house for a party. Clare Foley gave an outstanding performance along with Edward Arnold, Robert Hutton, (Pfc Dick Lawrence). This was a film made during World War II and was a morale builder for the American Fighting men and was very well produced.

"Janie" is a nothing of a movie. It's a bit of fluff clearly marketed to the teen crowd of the time.

But it's also an incredibly cynical bit of WWII propaganda, advertising a version of America that's never existed so that soldiers would feel they had something worth fighting for. Everyone's innocent, everyone's happy. Everyone's affluent, except those who aren't and who never appear in movies like this. Everyone who matters is white, and everyone who's not white is just happy to be of service to white folks. The naughtiest things soldiers and their girls get up to is a bit of necking in the woods, because our boys are wholesome and our girls are virginal.

I did enjoy the writers' attempt to make up for the saccharine grossness of this film by planting double entendres all over the place in the script. For example, when a soldier has been trying in vain to get time alone with Janie in her house: "I couldn't get in through the front so let's see if I can get in the back." Or when Janie is throwing a party for a horde of soldiers with hot dogs for everyone, the maid says something about the house being full of boys and weenies. It's like even the writers couldn't take it and had to throw in some real world stuff just to get through making this picture.

"Janie" was nominated for a Best Film Editing at the 1944 Oscars, which has to go down as one of the most random nominations of all time.

Grade: C.