She Loves Me Not

Did any movie idol have less sex appeal than Bing Crosby? (Okay, Robert Young comes close.) What a problem the studios had with Bing--that voice that drove the women mad, combined with an attitude toward women that could best be described as "courteous." Unlike Fred Astaire, the diffident Bing was not lucky enough to find a partner to give the act sex appeal--at least, not until he teamed up with Bob Hope, whose inept wolfishness made Bing's coldness look cool.

In this picture, as in Here Is My Heart the same year, the studio (why?) gave him Kitty Carlisle, the ponderous actress who acts comedy by making like a middle-aged good sport who's being good-naturedly informal with the kids. Even the number Bing adopted for his theme song, "Love in Bloom," doesn't whip up a romantic mood, even when Bing and Kitty, weirdly, sing it as two disembodied heads in a cloudy sky. But a youthful is rather foreclosed by a star who, more than ten years too old for his role, looks like a college professor rather than the undergrad he is supposed to be.

Kitty is further minimised by being sited outside the main plot, one that might have been the inspiration for Some Like It Hot. Miriam Hopkins, as a nightclub dancer (and can she shake a leg! who knew?), witnesses a gangland rubout and, fleeing the gangsters who want to do away with her, ends up at Princeton, where Bing helpfully cuts off her hair and gives her boys' clothes to hide in. Miriam turns out to be the most ungrateful damsel in distress ever rescued, constantly lying, mischief-making, and rather undermining the idea of hiding out by becoming a glutton for publicity. But her antics, rather than pepping up the show, fade away in this staid atmosphere.

Thirties character comedians Warren Hymer and Lynne Overman have some funny business, but the pace sags and the dialogue lacks invention. Fortunately, though, Bing ends up with Kitty without having to kiss her. How he must have been relieved!