Meus Braços Te Esperam

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Jack Warner saw how well MGM did with Two Weeks With Love, a nostalgic gaslight era musical that starred Jane Powell. I'm sure Warner then got the idea to do a musical for his reigning musical star of the moment Doris Day from the same era. And save a whole lot of money because nearly all the material is in the public domain.

On Moonlight Bay is the title of the film and one of several songs sung by Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, and Gordon's rival for Doris, Jack Smith all from the era before America's entry in World War I. Hollywood has done a lot to glamorize that era of Norman Rockwell and Grant Wood as America likes to see itself. Certainly none of the social problems the USA had in that era seem to intrude on Milbern, Indiana the fictional location Booth Tarkington had for the Winfield and Sherman families whose son and daughter find each other.

Of course if you paid a ticket to see social problems in a Doris Day film as that other Warner Brother icon would say, what a maroon. Doris as the tomboy first baseman hasn't quite discovered men yet, that is until she almost shoots Gordon MacRae. After that you know how this film will go.

One original song was done for On Moonlight Bay, the Christmas Story which Doris and Gordon sing with accompanying carolers. It blends nicely in with all the nostalgic material.

On Moonlight Bay and its sequel film, By The Light Of The Silvery Moon is based on the Booth Tarkington Penrod stories. Billy Gray who later was Bud Anderson in Father Knows Best plays Doris's younger brother Wesley (Penrod). He's one mischievous kid and whatever trouble he doesn't get into here is saved for the next film.

Doris, Gordon, and Billy all appear in the next film along with her parents Leon Ames and Rosemary DeCamp and maid Mary Wickes who always has a sharp word for the goings on.

I confess I have a fondness for the songs of this romantic era myself, so I'm prejudiced about On Moonlight Bay. But try it you young folk, you might like it.

Though it doesn't match the captivating staging of Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis as a nostalgic period musical, both this charmer and its sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon, based on Booth Tarkington's delightful Penrod stories, are very much in the same mold as the Minnelli classic; both films provide ideal vehicles for the multi-talented Doris Day, seen here at her most fetchingly tomboyish with her frequent on-screen partner at the time, Gordon MacRae. Their combined vocal talents bring genuine class to the turn of the (last) century tunes, providing a veritable cornucopia of some of the era's most recognizable standards. The pair create an easy chemistry mercifully free of the self-conscious projection so prevalent in many contemporary "feel-good" movies. Billy Gray, as Day's younger brother in his pre-Father Knows Best days was a likable and unspoiled child performer, who brought terrific comic timing in the delivery of his misplaced energies. Mary Wickes as the no-nonsense maid who acts as a kind of chorus to the action, is another notable scene-stealer, in a film which like so many of the early Doris Day musicals leaves this viewer with a warm glow.

I just happened across this one Sunday morning on Turner Classic Movies, and I loved it. What a cast: Doris, Gordon, Billy Gray (of "Father Knows Best"), Ellen Corby (Grandma of "The Waltons"), Mary Wicks (from the "Sister Act" movies) and others who made this a total trip down memory lane. I can hardly wait for the second movie, "By the Light of the Silvery Bay" (1953) to come on!

Its not often I give a film 10 of out of 10 but Doris Day movies consistently rate that high for me. If you are in a depressed or foul mood, her smiles, her singing, and the cast members around her always can lift you to another place. This is much like a Technicolor Judy Garland film in a lot of ways, with homespun family values and courting. At first, I had a problem with the leads, who seemed too old, playing teenagers. The actors grow on you, especially Doris. The actor playing her annoying kid brother is terrific. The parents are well portrayed and protective. The housekeeper is a wiley classic. Even the family dog gets in the act in several scenes. I recommend the film heartily especially if you want to smile and sing along. Doris Day is and has always been a national treasure. I am very glad I got a chance to spend the afternoon with her in this film.

The decade which gave us the First World War seems an unlikely subject for nostalgia. On Moonlight Bay, however, is a film which approaches the 1910s in a sentimental, nostalgic way, trying to persuade us that, whatever was happening on the battlefields of Europe, it was a time of a kinder, gentler America. The film centres upon the Winfield family, prosperous citizens of an unnamed mid-western town, and especially on the romance between their daughter Marjorie and her boyfriend William Sherman.

William is something of a radical, with advanced views about politics and the institution of marriage, but as he is the sort of well-scrubbed middle-class radical who always wears an impeccably-tied bow-tie and calls his girlfriend's father `sir', we know that in the end he will turn out to be a thoroughly respectable young man, eager to do the right thing by Marjorie and his patriotic duty to his country. (The fact that he has the same name as a famous general is perhaps a giveaway). The film deals with America's involvement in World War One in the traditional flagwaving manner; it was made at a time when the Cold War had recently become a hot war in Korea, so there is an obvious political subtext.

Set against this romance is a series of sub-plots involving Marjorie's mischievous younger brother Wesley, a sort of American Just William. Wesley is very well played by a young actor named Billy Gray, and his antics provide the film with its most amusing moments.

The film is a musical, and the songs are pleasant enough, although the tunes are not particularly memorable and the lyrics are clichéd in the best `Moon-in-June' style. The film as a whole, although it has nothing of any depth to say and even the political themes are dealt with rather superficially, makes agreeable entertainment, especially on a wet Sunday afternoon (which is when I saw it on TV). 6/10.