Loretta Young is a "Half Angel" in this 1951 comedy starring Joseph Cotten, Cecil Kellaway, Jim Backus and Irene Ryan. The beautiful Miss Young plays Nora, who by day is a very professional-looking nurse and by night a glamorous seductress. Apparently she has a split personality, and when her conscious mind goes to sleep, Nora's other personality wakes up and drops in on an old school chum who is now an important attorney (Cotten). Her mystique, her allure, her seductiveness make him crazy. Every time he spots the daytime starched nurse Nora, he happily approaches her and throws his arms around her - only to get slapped in the face. Nora is engaged to be married to someone else and besides, she has no memory of these nighttime escapades.
One of the reviewers on this site complained about the holes in the plot. This is the kind of film that doesn't hold up well under much - or any - scrutiny. It's a fantasy and has to be enjoyed as such. Nitpicking about how fast a trial is docketed and why someone receives a subpoena is like saying that tapping red rhinestone shoes together will never take you back home.
At 38, Loretta Young is absolutely gorgeous, as she always was and remained for the rest of her life. Huge eyes, a face the shape of a cameo, beautiful hair, slim figure - as if any of it is really hidden by a nurse's cap and uniform. For Nora the wild one, she wears her hair down and a flashy seafoam-colored dress. Which brings me to the film's color. It's very reminiscent of a Better Homes and Garden book from the '50s that I used to look at as a child - very bright colors and lots of them. I found the use of color in the film quite unusual.
A light comedy is strange casting for Joseph Cotten, but for my money, he pulls it off. This isn't a wildly funny movie, but it is an amusing one, and the psychiatric plot is in line with the post-war interest in the subconscious so prevalent in films of that era. This film takes the fluff approach, which movies like "The Snake Pit," "The Dark Past" and "Spellbound" did not. Loretta fans will love it.
