Gordon MacRae was honored back in August 2024 in Summer Under the Stars, and that gave me the opportunity to record a couple of his films that I hadn't blogged about before. One was By the Light of the Silvery Moon which I blogged about when it aired back in July 2025. Another was Tea for Two, which you can see at 4:30 PM tomorrow (October 5) on TCM.
Doris Day is again the female lead here, although it's a couple of minutes before we see her. Instead, we get another of those establishing stories like the one in Margie. A couple of teens are hosting a party for some of their friends, and have pulled out some of Mom and Dad's old things, which specifically means 1920s flapper outfits and male fashions, along with Charleston records that you'd play on a victrola. Great-uncle Max (S.Z. Sakall) shows up and asks the kids what they know about 1929. As you might guess, this is the cue to go back in time to 1929....
Uncle Max is an investment banker who has made the mistake of not making the best investments. Well, to be fair, the investments didn't seem bad at the time, but then October 1929 came along with the stock market crash. Max is the uncle and legal guardian to the investments of niece Nanette (Doris Day), who can't be bothered to worry her little head about the investments, or the fact that they're about to lose a lot of their value. She's the former fiancée of Broadway producer Larry Blair (Billy De Wolfe), and has dreams of staring in a show herself. She's got the money, and Larry knows it. So with that in mind, Larry brings over the two writers of a show he's hoping to put on, Jimmy (Gordon MacRae) and Tommy (Gene Nelson) to try to convince her to back the show financially.
Uncle Max has to sign off on spending the money however, and what he's never told Nanette is that he's sold a bunch of Nanette's investments thanks to that crash. She doesn't really have the money to back that show any more. So Max comes up with an idea that he just knows Nanette will ever be able to agree to. He bets her that she can't answer "No" to every question for the next two days. If, somehow, she does, Max will sign the check that would fund the show. Now, as you can guess, this is going to lead to all sorts of complications. But as you can also guess, Nanette and Jimmy are going to wind up together. They have to, after all, since it's their children in the opening scene.
I have to admit that Tea for Two isn't quite my favorite musical. A lot of that has to do with the plot, since Nanette's having to say "No" to everything leads to the sort of "comedy of lies" that I've never really cared for. That's somewhat unfair to the cast, since they do well with the material they're given. The songs are also good, both the ones that were in the original musical as well as some that Warner Bros. dusted off from old movie musicals of its own. Notable in this second group is "I Only Have Eyes for You".
People who like musicals and are looking for something undemanding that will entertain them will probably love Tea for Two.
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