Sérénade à Mexico

Barbara Olmstead (Shirley Temple) arrives in Mexico City hoping to marry her American GI boyfriend Phil (Guy Madison). He's late coming from the Panama Canal and there are the bureaucratic red tapes. US Embassy Vice Consul David Flanner (Franchot Tone) tries to help her, but that seems to elicit gossip. Nevertheless, he insists on accompanying her and she keeps mistaking every other GI for Phil.

The movie should start with Barbara and Phil together. They really need the time to build more chemistry. They are stiff as a couple. The situation is funniest when the young couple keeps budding into David's life to get help. His frustration is mildly humorous. Maybe Barbara and Phil should be dumb and dumber. That would probably work best for a comedy.

Honeymoon is a sweet comedy starring two very capable actors. Shirley Temple is all grown up here, almost, as a seventeen year old who wants to wed her soldier boyfriend. The two plan to meet in Mexico City, but problems arise with arriving on time. They only have a short amount of time to marry so they want to make use of all the time they have as man and wife. However, absolutely everything happens to prevent that from happening. Temple enlists the help of a man from the American Consolate (Franchot Tone) to assist her, but she causes more problems for him than he could ever imagine.

Temple is certainly different than the little girl everyone remembers her as. She does the same movements with her mouth, but she has matured into a very beautiful young woman. She has a knack for comedy so she excels in this film. Tone equals her. He is older than in his Joan Crawford days, but he has the same sweet face and strong acting talent. He seems to have gotten smarter over the years which enables him to be a dominant figure as well as a funny one.

I admit it, I'm just a sucker for these kind of romantic comedy fluff movies! I'd much rather watch a delightful and charming romp like this than some of the greatest film dramas made! I prefer to giggle rather than weep when I watch a film. Am I alone in this preference? Somehow, I doubt it.

Honeymoon stars Shirley Temple, all grown up (and looking prettier on film here than she ever did, before or after), and her character is in love with a soldier (Guy Madison) and wants to marry him, unfortunately in a foreign country. There's all kinds of paperwork to be done, so she tries to get the process expedited by using an older man, Franchot Tone (playing an American consul) as intermediary. He feels a sort of obligation to her because she's young and on her own (the soldier is supposed to meet her, but he gets sidetracked). Some very funny maneuverings keep placing her in Franchot's way, when he is trying to romance a lady of his own age, and his betrothed becomes jealous. Soon Shirley's character is developing a crush on the older man and becoming impatient with her own fiancée's boyish qualities.

There's a great pool scene where Shirley walks out in a pretty and modest bathing suit, but boy! does she look simply stunning! The film has a rather conventional, predictable ending, but we still enjoy it, because it feels right anyway and is pretty funny. I wonder why the script ended with "I now pronounce you ... legally married." How odd. What happened to "man and wife"?

TCM airs this May-December romance several times a year. Don't miss it, especially if you are a Shirley or Franchot fan. They're so cute together!

9 out of 10

Franchot Tone is an American diplomatic officer in Mexico City. He's engaged to Linay Romay and has a bright future ahead of him. Then Shirley Temple shows up. She's supposed to marry Guy Madison, a corporal on leave from the Canal Zone. Only he's nowhere to be found.

Various things happen, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and Miss Temple will inevitably fall in love with Tone. This movie flopped hard, and there are several obvious reasons, beginning with Tone. He was stuck in this sort of role at the time, cast as the young man on the rise in his forties, exuding a slightly bewildered air proclaiming he should be doing Chekhov, not this tripe. Edward Cronjager seems at a loss as to how to photograph Miss Temple. Sometimes she looks 12, not yet grown out of her baby fat, and sometimes she looks a pretty young woman in her 20s. Also, she's playing a woolly-minded flibbbertigibbet, always changing her mind, and it's not really attractive.

One player who's spot on is Miss Romay as Tone's fiancee. She knew how diplomats and the people around them acted because she was the daughter of a diplomat, a Mexican consular attache in Los Angeles. With the right connections and talents, she became a singer in Xavier Cugat's band and married into the wealthy Gould family. She died in 2010 at the age of 91.

Pretty teenager Shirley Temple (as Barbara Olmstead) arrives in Mexico City, where she is to marry handsome young Guy Madison (as Phil Vaughn). At the station, Ms. Temple reads a "Mexican Guide" which explains, "In Mexico almost everyone speaks Spanish," and advises her tipping is "not in vogue." After absorbing this helpful information, Temple learns Mr. Madison's flight has been delayed, from suave American consul Franchot Tone (as David Flanner). Madison arrives, and begins looking for Temple.

Meanwhile, Temple has forgotten to eat. She faints from hunger, and is rescued by Mr. Tone. After he feeds her, Temple finds herself oddly attracted to the "old-fashioned" older Tone, calling him the "Walter Pidgeon type." Then, they jitterbug.

The film continues to tease you about a sexual attraction between Temple and Tone. All along, you're fairly certain she will marry Madison. Confusion and misunderstanding between the threesome tries to make you laugh out loud. At best, the film filled theaters with a few tepid chuckles. The plot supposes Temple falls in love by landing on her man in a swimming pool. This is how she relates meeting Madison; the film's climax occurs when Temple, in a very modest two-piece, has a similar encounter with Tone.

*** Honeymoon (5/17/47) William Keighley ~ Shirley Temple, Franchot Tone, Guy Madison, Lina Romay