If you only know Grace Moore from *One Night of Love*, you should definitely check out this movie. It's much better.
First, Moore is much more at ease acting in front of the camera. In ONOL she often delivered her lines in a stilted way. Here, she is much more natural, and really seems to be having fun.
Second, and even though they do repeat it rather often, this movie does have a dynamite title song, which bears repeated listening.
Third, Moore is surrounded by a uniformly fine cast, starting with Melvyn Douglas and including Stu Erwin, Helen Westley, and Margaret Hamilton (yes, the Wicked Witch of the West, two years before TWOO), all in top form.
The weak point, frankly, is the three fully-staged operatic scenes. The first and the third, from Traviata Act I and the Love Duet from the end of the first act of Madama Butterfly, are well-performed. (The middle one, the Act III finale from Martha, is not as well done.) The problem is that they just sit there, and are not in any way integrated into the plot. If you think of a movie like Moonstruck, which does such a magnificent job of incorporating various scenes from La Boheme into its plot, you have some idea of what could have been done. Instead, the action just stops, and the audience is asked to sit back, watch, and listen, not even as if they were at the opera, because we are given no idea whatsoever of what is going on in those three scenes. If scenes had been chosen with situations similar to what was going on in the movie, and if the parallels had been indicated, the operatic scenes wouldn't have acted as dead weights in what is otherwise a nicely paced romantic comedy. (There is some effort to incorporate the scene from Manon into the action, but not much.)
Still, don't let those three scenes keep you away. Moore comes off as vivacious and fun-loving, Douglas is his usual easy-going and agreeable self. The result is an enjoyable 90 or so minutes.
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I watched this again on TCM. The cast is really very good, a group of first-rate comedians. It's a shame the material isn't up to the level of their talent. Every now and then it seems about to take off and become a good comedy, but then it falls flat again.
I still feel that the operatic numbers slow things down. Only the Butterfly duet is really well done. On the other hand, Moore does a great job with the few pop numbers she is given. She should have sung more popular numbers and cut back on the opera.
