You Can't Run Away from It

Evidently someone decided that since they had Technicolor available they could remake It Happened One Night. June Allyson, who was 39 when it was made, is dreadfully miscast as a rich brat who runs away from her father. Jack Lemmon tries his best to make it work, but even he must have cringed when singing the lame musical sequences. The black and white of the original mirrored the gloomy darkness of the Great Depression, and the rich brat's handing the last of their money to a hungry woman was a big turning point of the whole movie; none of that here. When will Hollywood producers learn that you can't remake perfection?

This was one of Jack Lemmon's first films. He is cast in the role of Peter Warren, a free-lance journalist who takes on the challenge of escorting spoiled rich girl Ellie Andrews (played by June Allyson) back to her Father (Charles Bickford) and husband. Peter and Ellie didn't plan on falling in love during their bus trip, but it happened ... just as in "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. This re-make is remarkably faithful to the original in plot and content. I would classify it as a charming, very tame movie worth the 80 minutes or so to watch it.

For fans of "It Happened One Night," it's fun to see how they remade it in the 50's, in Technicolor, and as a quasi-musical.

The young Jack Lemmon is a delight to see, and it would have been stupid to try to follow Clark Gable's act--no one could.

The oddball casting has June Allyson playing the Claudette Colbert role, but since June was producer/director Dick Powell's wife, it's comprehensible. June had a lot of appeal in many of her roles, but sexy she wasn't; she was more the girl next door, or the long-suffering, proper wife. Here, playing a post-debutante, June was, in real life, pushing 40. The supposedly sexy scenes had that sanitized 50's feel to them, and the chemistry between the two stars was minimal.

But June makes the movie in the scene where they sleep in a field, as she sings & dances to a scarecrow, with moves that would have done Donald O'Connor proud. Such energy & wit, paired with her funny, froggy voice, are a delight. Who knew she had all this talent hidden away?

There's a lot to enjoy, even though, like nearly all remakes, it falls a bit short.

The last review I read at IMDb for this film stated that it starred a "young" June Allyson. Actually, she was 39, seven years older than her co-star, Jack Lemmon, and MUCH too old to play the part of a young heiress fleeing her father. This in a nutshell is what ruins the film (along with it being made into a musical for the 2nd time). Not that she didn't do her best, but that she was simply miscast.

Besides, it was foolish to try to recreate a film when the original was already perfect. They had nowhere to go but down. Apparently, Allyson's husband (director of the film) was trying to bank in on what he thought would be a sure thing. The film did indeed make money, but not one person who ever lived thought it was remotely as good as the original. If you haven't see the 1934 version called It Happened One Night, do yourself a favor and watch that one first. There's a very good chance you won't want to bother watching another version once you see how good Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert were. Incidentally, this film was remade into a musical once before during the 1940s, and again was quite inferior to the original. Perhaps Hollywood should learn to leave a good thing alone.

Jack Lemmon, a new leading man in Hollywood in the 1950s and a younger June Allyson, straight from the M.G.M. Galaxy of musical stars made this a tuneful technicolour re-make of "It Happened One Night," for Columbia Pictures, ably assisted by Stubby Kaye, who never fails with a song; and all this under the direction of Dick Powell, who was married to June Allyson. There have been many post-war musicals released on Video and DVD and Columbia would do well to add this one to their DVD collection. It would be a fitting tribute to the multi-talented Jack Lemmon and Dick Powell who, himself, who was a song and dance man of the 1930s.