Some months back, TCM ran a Sunday night double feature of films starring Deanna Durbin. The first was It Started with Eve, but when I sat down to watch it I had the distinct feeling I'd seen it before. So instead I watched the other, Nice Girl?, to do the obligatory post on here. Now, as it turns out, I have seen It Started With Eve, but have never done a post on it; I wouldn't be surprised if the last time it was on TCM was before I started blogging since Deanna Durbin was at Universal and TCM doesn't get the rights to their films all that often. So I'll watch it again and eventually do a post on it.
Durbin plays Jane Dara, middle daughter in a family that is somehow middle class enough to have a maid Cora (Helen Broderick), as well as a father Oliver (Robert Benchley) who is doing experiments on the diets of rabbits that Jane helps with. Indeed, Dad is hoping to get a fellowship with a prestigious institute in New York to be able to help fund his studies. Jane has a boyfriend in Don Webb (a young Robert Stack), who has an interest in cars and could probably make a reasonable living as an auto mechanic, although I get the impression that even in those days this wasn't necessarily the profession a middle class man would want his daughter to marry.
A running subplot is Cora's relationship, or her being pursued by, the mailman Hector (Walter Brennan), who also leads the town's band that meets in the small-town park band shell for holidays like July 4, this being one of those Connecticut small towns that populated Hollywood movies like this in the years leading up to World War II. Hector brings Oliver a special delivery letter informing him that the foundation is sending a man from New York to look over the experiments with a view to the foundation funding these experiments. Jane goes to the train station to pick that man up: Richard Calvert (Franchot Tone). Richard has done research on various pygmy populations and the extent to which diet has made them short, and this has caused him to travel all over the world (and as we'll see later, have an impossibly big New York apartment for someone of his employment). That travel makes him sophisticated in the eyes of the three daughters, all of whom put on airs in the hopes that he'll take an interest in them, even if they're all too young for him.
Eventually it's time for Calvert to go back to New York, and Jane offers to drive him to the train station, in Don's convertible since Don's working on her car. However, she sabotages the convertible so that it won't get to the station on time, meaning she has to drive him to New York. They get stuck in the rain, and in a series of coincidences, Jane winds up wearing a pair of pajamas belonging to Richard's sister while her own clothes are drying. Then when Calvert makes it clear there's no romantic interest between them, Jane drives home in the middle of the night, arriving home at a scandalous time and making the whole town gossip about her.
Now, this is a Deanna Durbin movie, so we know that everything is going to come out right in the end. But to see exactly how that's going to happen, you'll have to watch for youreself. Nice Girl? is the sort of movie that I can see why it would appeal to fans of Deanna Durbin, especially back in 1941 when it was released. However, I can also see why Deanna Durbin was growing tired of these ingenue roles and wanted something more talent-stretching. This being Deanna Durbin, there are also several opportunities for her to sing, which again fans of hers will enjoy. The misunderstandings plot doesn't always work, and to me it felt wrapped up a bit too quickly. But for the most part Nice Girl? is simply inoffensive fun.
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