Review of Janie

Janie (1944)
10/10
For me, the real star of this great movie is Clare Foley, Janie's seven-year-old little sister.
7 April 2023
For me, the real star of this movie is Clare Foley, Janie's seven-year-old little sister. She is tremendously funny, ALMOST at a level equal to child actress Margaret O'Brien (Noted for the terrific movie, Meet Me In St. Louis.) Sadly, Clare Foley died at only 39 years of age. A DuckDuckGo search gives little information about her. As far as I can tell, she was only in the two Janie movies.

In an effort to compete with the popular family pictures being produced by MGM during the World War II era, like the Andy Hardy series, studio mogul Jack Warner charged his staff with creating a wholesome entertainment which would incorporate patriotism, small-town Americana and romance into an audience-pleasing film. The result was Janie (1944), a light romantic comedy about a 17-year-old year who decided to support the war effort by opening her home to every enlisted man stationed nearby. The accent is on humor in Janie with the central premise of adolescent girls developing crushes on visiting soldiers being treated in a charmingly naive way, devoid of any lewd suggestiveness. We will briefly see a very young singer Andy Williams (with his brothers) providing entertainment at a party scene.

Janie became one of Warner's biggest hits of 1944 grossing nearly two million dollars domestically! Pleased with Janie's success, Warner reassembled most of the cast for the inevitable follow-up, Janie Gets Married (1946), but replaced the engaging Reynolds with the studio's favorite all-American (Drop Dead Gorgeous) girl, Joan Leslie, (Joan Leslie's best role is in the movie, The Male Animal.) Also in Janie Gets Married is the very attractive Dorothy Malone.

The movies (Janie and Janie Gets married comes on the same disc.) comes on a burned (purple) DVD, not a longer lasting pressed (Silver) DVD.
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