I'll Be Yours

It appears that Universal was scrambling to get something in place for their golden meal ticket Deanna Durbin after she had her first baby and took some time off. After an hour, it is difficult to tell what the plot is. In the beginning, however, it seems predictable. A girl from a small town is going to NYC to make it big in the theater. During the movie, two scenes are borrowed from "First Love": Deanna showcasing her singing talents at a party that she sneaks into and then wins the affections of the millionaire who gave it, and then later on a dance with her prince charming the same way with her whirling around in a beautiful full gown. The worst thing they did to Deanna in this film was give her huge dark eyebrows which took something away from her natural beauty. I was glad to see that she said in her interview years later that this film was terrible.

Deanna Durbin had such a fine singing voice that no matter how thin her screenplays were, they were always salvaged somehow whenever she was given an opportunity to sing. I'LL BE YOURS almost proves to be a contradiction to that statement. No matter how charming she is and how competent her co-stars are, there is no doubt after the first twenty minutes that she is wasting her time in a film saddled with a script that nobody can do much about that. The others try hard--William Bendix, Adolphe Menjou and Tom Drake--but nothing helps until Durbin sings.

Durbin tells a white lie to Adolphe Menjou and therein lies the pretext for a story involving her supposed "marriage" to Tom Drake (here sporting an unbecoming mustache). Needless to say, our heroine straightens everything out in a time for the finale and along the way sings a couple of songs, notably "Granada", which, as another viewer noted, is well worth the price of admission. Only Durbin's most ardent fans will appreciate this one.

This film is a good example of what can happen when a sure-fire box office star's movies get stereotyped. Gradually, the formula starts to get stale, the studio doesn't do anything to improve the situation, and the films deteriorate. No wonder Durbin described this movie as "terrible" in a rare interview years after she left Hollywood. It is. Besides Durbin, a bunch of good actors--William Bendix, Adolphe Menjou, Tom Drake etc.--are saddled with an amazingly trite script that insults even those willing to suspend disbelief. Fortunately, Durbin's voice is as glorious as ever, and her musical numbers at least provide respite. William Bendix has his moments, too. See it for Durbin's songs and fast-forward through the rest of it.

I watched William A. Seiter's 'I'll Be Yours' practically back to back with William Wyler's 'The Good Fairy' (1935) because I wanted to compare both pictures (based on the same play by Ferenc Molnar). While Wyler's film is generally rated higher I liked 'I'll Be Your's' better. 'The Good Fairy' is a delightful, funny film and Margaret Sullavan is great, but comedy was not her strong point. Also, she did not convince me as a seventeen or eighteen years old hyper-naive orphan. In 'I'll Be Yours', Seiter straightened out some of the more implausible bits of the plot (e.g. Louisa Ginglebuscher does not pick her lawyer from a phone book but gets his business card when she meets him in a restaurant). The female lead is less naive and and at least as charming as Sullavan. And finally, 'The Good Fairy' has no Deanna Durbin singing in it. That clinches it!

I'll Be Yours may not be one of Deanna Durbin's best movies, but it really is not a bad movie. The other actors in this movie are great, especially William Bendix, Adolphe Menjou, Walter Catlett and even Tom Drake. By comparison to most of her movies, it does seem like unbelievable fluff, although her movies are more for entertainment than realism anyway. I mention this, because I'll Be Yours is a remake of The Good Fairy from 1935, with Margaret Sullavan and Herbert Marshall, which seems difficult to believe as it is with the naivety in that movie, but considering Good Fairy takes place in early to mid 1930's Hungary and that Sullavan's character comes from an orphanage and has never seen the real world, the plot is a little more plausible. For I'll Be Yours, The Good Fairy story is updated to 1947 and takes place in New York City, both of which really don't work for this kind of plot, no matter how good the acting is. Deanna seems too sophisticated for the plot, even though they changed the character's background from an orphanage to small town girl, and Tom Drake seems way too naive for an American male of this period. All in all, this is not a bad movie, but one does expect better for this cast.