If a movie gives you Hedy Lamarr to look at, it seems churlish to complain. But even the presence of one of the most beautiful women who ever lived, plus the adorable June Allyson and the endearing Robert Walker do not begin to compensate for the hideously vulgar and phoney goings-on.
This routine princess-falls-in-love-with-ordinary-American comedy is joined with a love story between Walker and Allyson, the woman he really loves without realising it. Nothing wrong with that, but she is paralysed from the waist down. Why? Because--the doctor gives us his medical opinion--in childhood she was not loved enough!
Can you imagine the feelings of parents of crippled children on hearing such a thing? Back in the Forties, most people would have thought such a question absurdly oversensitive, but now it's a matter of common decency. Not only that, there is a long dream sequence in which Allyson imagines herself, in a feathered evening gown, dancing with Walker. Worse yet, at the end she actually begins to walk! and starts dancing with him! In the absence of a FAIRY princess to wave a magic wand, this is repulsively vulgar and cruel.
Not only that, but Allyson is portrayed in a manner right out of cheap Victorian sentimentality. She does not sit in an ugly wheelchair but reclines on a couch, rising from it only when Walker, visiting her in the evenings, carries her to the roof for some fresh air. I wonder if any kid in the audience ever piped up, "How does she go to the bathroom?" She has a lovely flat, full of antiques and beautifully kept, which is understandable, as she works at painting dolls, and earns as much as--$3 a day! Poor June! She spends the whole film in cotton pyjamas or a floor-length, high-collared, puffed-sleeve nightie, while Hedy gets to float around in one fabulous evening gown after another.
Some more hypocrisy: The princess wants to see some low life, so Walker, very reluctantly and apologetically, takes her to a place where the floor show is a couple in 19th-century costume, singing "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie." Positively decadent! One man punches another, leading to the kind of phoney free-for-all that happens only in the movies. I have always wondered why, if two men start fighting in a saloon, other men should suddenly start fighting each other all over the place, and women should whack them over the head with bottles. Never happens when fights break out in the low dives I go to.
This routine princess-falls-in-love-with-ordinary-American comedy is joined with a love story between Walker and Allyson, the woman he really loves without realising it. Nothing wrong with that, but she is paralysed from the waist down. Why? Because--the doctor gives us his medical opinion--in childhood she was not loved enough!
Can you imagine the feelings of parents of crippled children on hearing such a thing? Back in the Forties, most people would have thought such a question absurdly oversensitive, but now it's a matter of common decency. Not only that, there is a long dream sequence in which Allyson imagines herself, in a feathered evening gown, dancing with Walker. Worse yet, at the end she actually begins to walk! and starts dancing with him! In the absence of a FAIRY princess to wave a magic wand, this is repulsively vulgar and cruel.
Not only that, but Allyson is portrayed in a manner right out of cheap Victorian sentimentality. She does not sit in an ugly wheelchair but reclines on a couch, rising from it only when Walker, visiting her in the evenings, carries her to the roof for some fresh air. I wonder if any kid in the audience ever piped up, "How does she go to the bathroom?" She has a lovely flat, full of antiques and beautifully kept, which is understandable, as she works at painting dolls, and earns as much as--$3 a day! Poor June! She spends the whole film in cotton pyjamas or a floor-length, high-collared, puffed-sleeve nightie, while Hedy gets to float around in one fabulous evening gown after another.
Some more hypocrisy: The princess wants to see some low life, so Walker, very reluctantly and apologetically, takes her to a place where the floor show is a couple in 19th-century costume, singing "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie." Positively decadent! One man punches another, leading to the kind of phoney free-for-all that happens only in the movies. I have always wondered why, if two men start fighting in a saloon, other men should suddenly start fighting each other all over the place, and women should whack them over the head with bottles. Never happens when fights break out in the low dives I go to.