Darling, How Could You!

Darling, How Could You is based on a James M. Barrie play Alice Sit By The Fire which when it came to Broadway in 1905 boasted in its cast Ethel Barrymore in the Joan Fontaine role and her brother John Barrymore in the part Peter Hansen played. I'm willing to bet that as Barrie wrote it originally the parents were in some British setting instead of Americans building the Panama Canal.

John Lund and Joan Fontaine are in 1905 America where they are a doctor working the hospital and his wife with three kids who are all back in the states including an infant who was born in the Canal Zone, but was sent back to the States to join the other two, Mona Freeman and David Stollery in the care of their grandparents. Now they are returning home along with doctor colleague Peter Hansen.

Now the kids have to get reacquainted with their parents. For Freeman it will be most difficult as she is a girl with an active imagination that's been stimulated by a lot of Victorian morality type dramas.

Some innocent words spoken by Hansen to Fontaine stimulates the young lady and all the comedic situations thereafter stem from that.

As we were in the button down 50s when Darling How Could You came out, they had far more in common with Victorian standards then we do today. I venture to say that Darling How Could You is hardly a candidate for a remake.

Still it's an amusing antique.