She Couldn't Say No

Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum both lend star quality to this unassuming endeavor. It doesn't seem that they're lending it together. Mitchum was still playing characters, albeit here a country doctor, who'd have sex with anything in a skirt. Simmons seems less interested.

It's a sweet story. She seeks out a small town whose citizens had helped her when she was a sick child. Now, therein lies the single greatest flaw of this movie: Maybe the print I saw had been cut. However, exactly what this little town did to help a child of privilege is never made clear. And that kinds of eats away at the ore of the movie.

Still, her well meaning but ill thought-out good deeds make for a touching little story.

And the sequence in which people from all over the country drive up, trailers pulled behind their cars, hoping to benefit from her largess, sure is reminiscent of "Ace In The Hole"! That's an infinitely more cynical movie but these scenes have a dark quality too.

The other mystery is Simmons's clothes, especially in the first half. I am not one to pay much attention to ladies' fashions but she sure does appear to be pregnant hen she arrives in town.

She did have a baby not long after this. Maybe the movie was shot completely out of sequence; because in later scenes, she seems trim and chic. (She is chic in the maternity-style clothes, too, but they are hardly flattering to her.)