The Voice of the Turtle

TCM must have had an Eleanor Parker day, which would explain why I recorded a couple of her movies in close proximity. In addition of Many Rivers to Cross which I recently blogged about, my DVR also had One for the Book, which was based on a play titled The Voice of the Turtle and originally released to theaters under that title. (The print TCM showed in fact had a title card reading The Voice of the Turtle, but in the listings and in my YoutubeTV library it was listed as One for the Book.)

Parker plays Sally, a struggling actress in New York City in the later stages of World War II. (The play premiered in 1943 and was a big hit; the movie premiered just as the stage play was ending its run in 1947 and "updates" the action to late 1944.) Sally has been in a relationship with Kenneth (Kent Smith). But he's unwilling to make the sort of committment that Sally wants, so he basically breaks off the relationship and exits the movie.

Sally commiserates with her best friend and fellow actress Olive (Eve Arden, clearly here to provide the comic relief once again). She's got a thing for military men, this being the height of World War II, and is currently seeing naval Commander Ned Burling (Wayne Morris). But Ned isn't the first military guy she's been with during the war. Another of them, Sgt. Bill Page (Ronald Reagan), has gotten leave, and he's in town looking up Olive.

Olive doesn't want to be mean to Bill, so she decides to set him up on a dinner with Sally since both of them are looking for someone to go out on the town with. The two of them spend a pleasant enough evening together, but then Bill finds there's a mix-up with his hotel reservation and he no longer seems to have a place to stay for the night, something that was again a common theme during World War II. And as you can guess, the two start developing feelings for each other.

This causes problems for any number of reasons. Of course, society isn't necessarily going to look so highly on the idea of an unmarried woman having a man in her apartment overnight. And then there's Olive, who finds that perhaps she still has feelings for Bill. She's apparently not a one-woman man, and when the traditional rom-com trope of the two leads possibly breaking up before getting back together in the final reel comes, Olive is there waiting to pounce.

One for the Book is a pleasant enough romantic comedy, although it's also one that's pretty tightly bound to the era the play was created. When the movie was released in 1947, there was still enough respect for soldiers to make something like this work, but trends like the move to the suburbs and then less virtuous wars like Korea would change America enough to make something like this a museum piece. Sgt. Page is the sort of light and affable role that's perfect for Ronald Reagan, while Parker charms as well. Eve Arden is typically great as the comic relief. So although the movie is dated, it's still worth a watch to see an America that's never going to exist again.