Never Say Goodbye

Errol Flynn did have the ability to do comedy, even if he didn't get much of a chance to show this ability at Warner Bros. Even when he was put into a comedy, he got a less than stellar script, as in Never Say Goodbye.

Errol plays Philip Gayley, who is looking to buy a coat for his daughter Philippa, nicknamed Flip (Patti Brady). Having just shown up earlier at the same department store to buy Flip a coat is Flip's mother Ellen (Eleanor Parker). It turns out that Philip and Ellen are divorced, but have joint custody of Flip. The daughter is expected to live for six months with Dad, followed by six months with Mom, and today is the day when Flip is supposed to go back to Mom along with Flip's nanny Cozy (Hattie McDaniel, who's much underused here).

Philip still holds a bit of a flame for Ellen, and wouldn't be opposed to getting back together with her, but he's a magazine artist whose job has him doing drawings of glamorous young women such as Nancy (Peggy Knudsen), so sometimes the temptation has gotten too great and he spent enough time with those women to make Ellen jealous. This, combined with a mother-in-law (Lucile Watson) who seems to have it in for Philip, and you can understand why Ellen has gotten a divorce.

Meanwhile, Flip definitely wants Mom and Dad to get back together, and encourages them to go to dinner at a restaurant run by Philip's friend Luigi (S.Z. Sakall), but that goes bad when it transpires that Philip had also invited Nancy there to dinner on the same evening and has to try to keep the two women apart, which you know he isn't going to be able to do. There's also the chance to make Flip happy by having Phil surreptitiously play Santa instead of Ellen's new love interest, but that one goes bad as well.

There's still one more chance, however. The movie having been released in 1946, it's right after the end of World War II. Flip did her part for the war effort by becoming a pen pal to a Marine in a program that apparently matched servicemen without anybody to write to them and people who wanted to help. However, Flip sent that marine, Fenwick Lonkowski (Forrest Tucker), a picture of Ellen which naturally leads him to believe he's been getting letters from a lovely adult woman and not an eight-year-old kid, although you'd think he could tell from the handwriting. Unsurprisingly, Fenwick shows up and all sorts of complications arise.

I said at the beginning that Flynn didn't get the best script here, and it's a shame because there's a lot of potential here that goes unrealized. Flynn's character is basically a good guy and Ellen probably knew in her heart that she had made a mistake. But the whole restaurant bit, with Flynn having to lie constantly, goes on way too long. The Marines subplot with Fenwick is also unrealistic, as I can't imagine him being fooled into thinking he got letters from an adult.

It's a testament to the quality of the actors, however, that all of them give their best and do pretty much as well as the script allows them to do. One just wishes the script were better.