Annie Was a Wonder

Annie Was a Wonder (1949)

** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated short from John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series. Nesbitt narrates the story of Annie (Kathleen Freeman), a Swedish woman who came to American to work as a maid. She's almost fired on her first day but the father of the family falls in love with her cooking and keeps her on. This here leads to a close relationship between the family and their maid. This is a decent short but there's really nothing here to make it worth seeking out, although if you've got ten minutes to kill and spot it on Turner Classic Movies then you mind find it as mild entertainment. Freeman gives a pretty good performance but the film never really allows her to take shape and deliver what we need and that was some sort of character movement. The narration is decent but there's just not enough here to keep it going even through its short running time.

Kathleen Freeman plays Anna, a Swedish immigrant who worked as a housekeeper for John Nesbitt's family in the long ago days. It's from the last year of MGM THE PASSING PARADE, a series that Nesbitt had been performing, on radio, in the movies, and later on television, since the middle of the 1930s.

It's a story of America, with the foreigner of today becoming the solid American several decades later.

It's a rebuke to the know-nothing, anti-Foreign impulse that so often afflicts people. I speak from experience. My paternal grandparents came from Europe about a century ago, finding work as, respectively, a hat maker and a scrub woman.

I always think of KATHLEEN FREEMAN as Miss Dinsmore, the vocal coach for Jean Hagen in the hilarious SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Actually she had numerous TV and film credits to her name for a long period of time beginning in the late '40s, but this is her only starring role in a John Nesbitt "Passing Parade" short about immigrant hired girls from Europe.

Freeman is Annie Swenson from Sweden, who doesn't pass the test as maid to an American household until the dad gets a taste of her cooking. As the narrator says, from then on she "conquers the father through the stomach" with some good Swedish recipes.

"I guess I don't send for my trunk, yes?" she asks in her Swedish accented voice.

She becomes a dear member of the family and eventually marries and has to say her good-byes to the family that took her in as a maid, starting at 84 hours a week, room and board, for $15 a month.

A nice look back at a time that doesn't exist any longer with a fine performance from Freeman in this Oscar-nominated short from MGM.

It's a shame that John Nesbitt's stories aren't shown more often... I caught this one on TCM's "One Reel Wonders" segment, along with "Our old Car". His stories really show what it was like at the beginning of the 20th century. I hope someone does the same for our era.

One of the many one reel films that Turner Classic Movies is prone to show in between full-length films, ANNIE WAS A WONDER is one of the many shorts narrated by John Nesbitt featuring the film debut of Kathleen Freeman, best known for her much later movie and TV career even though she acted all throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. She plays Swedish immigrant Annie Svenson who comes to the US and works a maid for an affluent family, and slowly forges a life of her own while retaining her own identity as a person. This is a simple production which manages to convey a cute clash of a foreign culture with Americana with essentially apt performances.