Prima Donna

Screen Directors Playhouse: Prima Donna (1956)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely annoying entry in the Screen Directors Playhouse series. Jeanette MacDonald plays Martha, a vocal master who comes across a young boy (Alfred Caiazza) selling newspapers. The woman takes the kid back to her apartment because she plans on turning him into a major star due to his voice but first she must sell the idea to his parents. When I read the plot outline to this entry I thought it sounded good enough but the end result is a major disaster that doesn't work on any level. I'm sure some people might find it somewhat entertaining but to me it was one of the most annoying films I've seen in quite sometime. The big secret is that MacDonald invites the kids parents over not knowing that they're actually Laraine Day and Leo Durocher. When Day and Durocher show up we get a long comic spill of MacDonald not knowing they're the kids father so she tries to get rid of them and insults the kid's parents in front of them. This sequence takes up the majority of the middle act and spills over into the final one and I couldn't help but want to scratch my eyes out because it was so poorly written, so poorly acted and worst of all is that it doesn't contain a single laugh. The MacDonald characters just comes as very cold-hearted and annoying and it's just downright shocking that anyone could be as dumb. We get a couple musical numbers that are just as poor as the dubbing was quite obvious. I don't mind the dubbing so much but the performance itself was quite mediocre to say the least. As far as the performances go, none of them really stand out. MacDonald has some nice energy but that's about it. Caiazza doesn't have much power on the screen and Day and Durocher just sit around with shocked looks on their faces.