Les lycéennes

The Tammy movies are never going to be confused for high art. They were meant to be light hearted fun that you could take your kids to.

The sequel continues the same corny story but the big difference is Sandra Dee replacing Debbie Reynolds. I love Sandra Dee and think she made the perfect Gidget bur she is not Debbie Reynolds. She deserves credit for taking the chance on following Reynolds because she knew there would be comparisons. Of course Sandra was head and shoulders better than Debbie Watson.

The story has Tammy going to college and just as in the original she is responsible for others rediscovering their love or hooking up with their true mate. Beulah Bondi has the role Mildred Natwick had in the original of the wise old woman. Bondi, like Natwick, was one of the great supporting actresses in Hollywood and lends a touch of class to the movie.

As for the rest of the cast, John Gavin is no Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen really was a good straight actor and Gavin is as stiff as a tree in comparison. The rest of the supporting cast is similarly a notch below the original.

If you like Sandra Dee, check out Gidget. It's just as much fun but with a better story and cast.

It's been four years since the first Tammy film and Sandra Dee has taken over the title role from Debbie Reynolds. Dee is charming and disarming with her country ways and wisdom. Even among the college educated at the college she's decided to take some courses at.

Actually Tammy has the first lesson down very well, the realization that there is a lot out there that one does not know. She heads off to college and first meets speech instructor John Gavin. She gets a job as a companion to the elderly Beulah Bondi whose life has been taken over by her niece Julia Meade who is eyeing that big inheritance.

The plot here is taken quite a bit from Pollyanna, both the silent version with Mary Pickford and the famous Disney one with Hayley Mills. Dee just spreads a lot of sunshine into everyone's life and makes believers of all except possibly Meade who loses a bundle.

Best scenes in the film are with Dee and Bondi whom she invites to go live on her river flatboat for a bit. Bondi did that in her youth and actually enjoys the time away from that mansion that feels like a prison to her. She even gets a little senior citizen romance going with Cecil Kellaway.

If you were a fan of the first Tammy film you will not be disappointed with what Sandra Dee did with this film.

Pete is at agricultural college. Tammy Tyree (Sandra Dee) decides to go to college herself. She encounters poetry reading Tom Freeman who teaches public speaking. She joins his class. She needs a job and tries to be companion to elderly Annie Rook Call. Mrs. Call's niece rejects her but Annie is desperate for freedom. Annie runs away to join her on her boathouse, the Ellen B.

This is a sequel to Tammy and the Bachelor (1957). Sandra Dee replaces Debbie Reynolds. Sandra is laying it down thick and play it up to the rafters. That has a charm of its own like a simple caricature. The fish-out-water is fun but some of the reactions go too far. It's fun until it becomes awkwardly unreal. Nobody would laugh at some of those moments. When that feels out of place, it takes away from the resolution's poignancy. Despite some clunkiness, this has a sweetness and charm to it.

"Tammy Tell Me True" is the sequel to and second film of a series of four that began with "Tammy and the Bachelor" in 1957. The series is based on a 1948 novel by Cid Ricketts Sumner, "Tammy Out of Time." It is set in the bayou country of southern Louisiana and Mississippi around New Orleans.

Debbie Reynolds was the original Tammy Tyree, but four years later she could hardly pass as a teenager as she had been a 17-year-old in 1957, at the age of 25. So, her role was taken over by the now closer to age, Sandra Dee, at 19. And, she does a fairly good job in the role.

The story picks up right where the other one left off, except that Peter Brent has gone off to college. There's a little incongruity here because he wasn't a high school or college kid in the first one, but a young man in his mid-to-late 20s. At least that's how his character was portrayed, along with his fiancé. But, skipping over that, Tammy has been staying with the Brent's at their estate which is in a hilly part of Mississippi, when she decides she needs some formal schooling. Even without having attended school, she is knowledgeable enough in reading and writing to be accepted in a special student assistance program at Seminola College.

Another anomaly appears here, when Tammy gets her houseboat towed downriver to tie up across the swamps near the college campus. As nearly as one can tell, the college must be in or very close to New Orleans, so, it's a real stretch to imagine that there was a bayou place along the river above there from which Tammy moved downstream.

All of that aside, Sandra Dee does a fairly good job, continuing the bayou drawl and lingo. She falls for a speech teacher, Tom Freeman (played by John Gavin) and concludes that her love for Pete was probably just infatuation with the first real man of her age in her life. This story has a good new sub-plot with some good new characters, as Tammy becomes a companion of an elderly lady and winds up helping another couple get their marriage back on track.

The supporting cast has more well-known actors of the day in Beulah Bondi, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Virginian Grey and others. The is a good continuation of the story, with good performances, but not quite up to the fresh first story with its stars and great performances.

Here are some favorite lines from this film.

Annie Rook Call, paying the boat captain who takes her out to Tammy's houseboat, "Here you are. Remember, not one word to anyone." Captain Armand, "Compared to me, madame, a corpse talks too much."

Tammy, "I'd like the fastest stamp you got, please." Post office clerk (Alan DeWitt, uncredited), "Air mail - we haven't switched to rockets yet."

Sandra Dee assumes the role of Tammy Tyree, uneducated backwoods girl living on a shanty boat on the Mississippi River, formerly played by Debbie Reynolds in 1957's "Tammy and the Bachelor". There's not much connection between the two films aside from our heroine: Tammy's beau has disappeared to agricultural college and her grandpa has been jailed for making corn liquor without a license. Producer Ross Hunter, he of the well-upholstered "women's films" popular in the 1950s, would seem an odd choice for a romantic comedy about a Bible-quotin' young gal without any schoolin'--or an impressive wardrobe--hankerin' to go to college, but at least the production is bright and cheery, like Tammy herself. Dee does well in the lead, while Hunter has her comfortably paired with John Gavin, her crush from "Imitation of Life" (he was too old for her there--and he's probably too old for her here--but they have an easy rapport). Tammy's plain-spoken, unpretentious nature garners her a friend in Beulah Bondi's wealthy dowager, Mrs. Call, which offers some pleasant asides and a satisfying wrap-up in court. Glossy, perky, but also exceptionally thin and sugary...likely to cause bad reactions in viewers not in the mood for a heavy helping of syrup. Dee played Tammy again in 1963's somewhat improved "Tammy and the Doctor." ** from ****