Richard Thorpe’s A Date with Judy is a feather-light family saga complete with misunderstandings, jealousies, and just enough laughs to fill the bill.
The Production: 3/5
When Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland grew out of their adolescence and into more mature roles at MGM, Louis B. Mayer began a new series of teenaged musicals, most of them in color and many of them featuring silver-voiced Jane Powell who could sing both swing and opera as the need arose and was the chipper, perky all-American girl Mayer put on a pedestal. Though she continued to be featured in many of these films when she had long passed the teen years and had given birth to children of her own, many of Jane Powell’s musicals were light and fun, trippy entertainments produced within MGM’s second and third musical units that lacked the gravitas of the Freed Unit’s output. Richard Thorpe’s A Date with Judy, based on a popular radio series, is one such production: a feather-light family saga complete with misunderstandings, jealousies, and just enough laughs to fill the bill.
Upper middle-class families the Fosters and the Pringles of Santa Barbara find themselves stuffed with chaotic conundrums: sixteen-year old Judy Foster (Jane Powell) is having a tiff with longtime boy friend Oogie Pringle (Scotty Beckett) when Stephen Andrews (Robert Stack), a handsome man in his 20s, begins working at the local drug store as he earns money for medical school. Judy is smitten with him, but so is Oogie’s fetching older sister Carol (Elizabeth Taylor, vocals by Jean McLaren) who’s the BWOC in high school and calls all the shots that she expects everyone to honor. Judy is further mortified when she sees a strange woman (Carmen Miranda) in her father’s (Wallace Beery) office not knowing that he’s secretly taking rhumba lessons from her so he can surprise his wife (Selena Royle) on their wedding anniversary. With love lives on the line and everything up in the air, who knows what will happen?
The Dorothy Cooper-Dorothy Kingsley screenplay is a lot of fluff and nonsense, just a long trail of misunderstandings and wrong assumptions that none of the characters take the time to get to the bottom of until the very end thus making the people involved having to spend the majority of the film’s overlong 114-minute running time in a state of miserable uncertainty. Such fluff does allow for a plethora of songs to be performed: three different renditions of the movie’s Oscar-nominated hit tune “It’s a Most Unusual Day” along with two Carmen Miranda specialties “Cooking with Glass” and “Quanto Le Gusta,” and Powell showing the range of her voice in the more provocative “Love Is Where You Find It” and the lighter, more wholesome “I’m Strictly on the Corny Side’ and “Judaline,” the latter two numbers either with Scotty Beckett or an impressive close harmony quartet. Stanley Donen is credited for dance direction, but there is really very little dancing apart from Wallace Beery kicking up his heels near the end to show that his rhumba lessons haven’t been in vain.
Though Jane Powell was actually older than Elizabeth Taylor in real life by three years, you’d never suspect with Taylor’s continuously ravishing appearance throughout the movie (she was only fifteen, but that’s very hard to believe) with adult hairstyles and a stunning wardrobe (gowns in coral-trimmed crème, aquamarine, emerald, and canary) by Helen Rose that particularly accentuates her tiny waist, violet eyes (which almost seem to change color depending on the gowns she’s wearing), and rapidly maturing features. Her character is self-involved and manipulative, easily convincing Powell’s naïve Judy to change dresses before the big dance so Judy won’t be wearing the same-colored gown as her and pushing her brother around to do her bidding. Both women own their roles. Wallace Beery is less hammy than usual, too, and there are several funny running gags pertaining to his need for glasses and Gramps’ (entertaining George Cleveland) confusion about the sounds of the doorbell and telephone. Scotty Beckett and Robert Stack offer grounded performances with Stack particularly dynamic. With her career having faded at 20th Century-Fox, Carmen Miranda comes to MGM and brings her usual malaprop-laden performance with the expected verve but noticeably doesn’t wear any elaborate headgear for a nice change (she’d be back in them in her next MGM outing Nancy Goes to Rio also with Jane Powell). The always reliable Clinton Sundberg as the Pringle butler, Lloyd Corrigan as the druggist, Leon Ames as the Pringle paterfamilias, and Xavier Cugat as himself also make notable appearances.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film’s 1.37:1 theatrical aspect ratio is faithfully captured in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. As usual with Warner Archive Technicolor releases, the three-strip process yields astonishing results with rich but never blooming hues and lots of detail in hair, facial features, and clothes. There are no registration issues with the Technicolor. Skin tones are very appealing, and one couldn’t ask for a better, more pristine image throughout. The movie has been divided into 35 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound mix is very typical to its era and offers excellent fidelity throughout. Dialogue and song lyrics are also clearly and cleanly presented, and the mix with the music and sound effects could not be better with the orchestra never overwhelming the singers. There are no age-related anomalies with hiss, pops, crackle, or flutter.
Special Features: 3.5/5
Professor Tom (7:37, HD): 1948 Tom & Jerry animated short.
Musical Merry-Go-Round #3 (10:51, SD): 1948 one-reel live action musical short featuring disc jockey Martin Block.
Jane Powell Interview (5:19): radio interview with the star conducted by Dick Simmons.
A Date with Judy (29:36): an episode of the radio show “Oogie and His Hot Licks.”
Theatrical Trailer (2:48, SD)
Song Selection Menu: instant access to thirteen musical moments in the movie.
Overall: 3.5/5
Richard Thorpe’s A Date with Judy is an old-fashioned musical with no sophisticated cinematic or musical flourishes but rather a tidy domestic comedy laced with fine tunes and earnest performances. The Warner Archive Blu-ray release brings the movie to homes in its best possible quality which will likely satisfy fans of the stars or the genre.
Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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