I was cruising the on line cable listings today and came across this unknown title featuring Jimmy Stewart. The description prompted me to tune in and it turned out to be an entertaining hour and a half. Stewart turns in a characteristic Everyman performance as a department store executive whose life is turned upside down by winning a television quiz contest. I was surprised actually, to see how much the story looked like an episode of 'Father Knows Best', which premiered only four years later. The Lawrence's (Stewart and Barbara Hale) might have been one kid shy, but they wound up with a lot of other things on their mind once the story got rolling. Natalie Wood and Tommy Rettig portray the Lawrence siblings, with Tommy helping his Dad cash in on 'Name The Mystery Husband'. Somehow I didn't recognize him as the same actor who I grew up with watching Lassie and his (her) pal Jeff Miller, but he was only about nine years old here.
The story starts out almost too seriously, as Bill Lawrence's boss Woodruff (Fred Clark) tries to correct the ratio of salespeople to customers at his store. But when Bill gets a phone call from the Federal Broadcast System to enlist his participation for the game show, the comic antics begin. Stewart's character engages in some obvious physical humor, but when he finally wins the show's big prize, the fun really begins. Soon a parade of prize bearers descend on the Lawrence home with gifts ranging from your standard jewelry to thousands of cans of soup (Campbell's gets a plug), all the way to a palomino pony. After a while it looked like the story was struggling with too many plot elements, as a glamorous looking portrait artist (Patricia Medina) was introduced as a burr to the Lawrence marriage. And in an effort to raise the seven grand he would need to cover the taxes on his winnings, Lawrence gets caught up in a raid on a gambling parlor. How the film makers got all of this into a mere eighty five minutes seems a mystery to me now.
Something else that brought me back to that great era of the Fifties was that catchy little number 'Ain't We Got Fun'. I must have heard that dozens of times watching Warner Brothers cartoons back in the day, and you know, I don't think I've ever heard it since. The song bookends the picture in a nicely complementary fashion.
With all that going on, it would be worth your while to catch this one when it hits your local cable listings. I found it on the Fox Movie Network today, so that's a likely place to look for it again. The only question I have though, and I kept waiting for this particular game prize to show up, but - what ever happened to the French Maid?
The story starts out almost too seriously, as Bill Lawrence's boss Woodruff (Fred Clark) tries to correct the ratio of salespeople to customers at his store. But when Bill gets a phone call from the Federal Broadcast System to enlist his participation for the game show, the comic antics begin. Stewart's character engages in some obvious physical humor, but when he finally wins the show's big prize, the fun really begins. Soon a parade of prize bearers descend on the Lawrence home with gifts ranging from your standard jewelry to thousands of cans of soup (Campbell's gets a plug), all the way to a palomino pony. After a while it looked like the story was struggling with too many plot elements, as a glamorous looking portrait artist (Patricia Medina) was introduced as a burr to the Lawrence marriage. And in an effort to raise the seven grand he would need to cover the taxes on his winnings, Lawrence gets caught up in a raid on a gambling parlor. How the film makers got all of this into a mere eighty five minutes seems a mystery to me now.
Something else that brought me back to that great era of the Fifties was that catchy little number 'Ain't We Got Fun'. I must have heard that dozens of times watching Warner Brothers cartoons back in the day, and you know, I don't think I've ever heard it since. The song bookends the picture in a nicely complementary fashion.
With all that going on, it would be worth your while to catch this one when it hits your local cable listings. I found it on the Fox Movie Network today, so that's a likely place to look for it again. The only question I have though, and I kept waiting for this particular game prize to show up, but - what ever happened to the French Maid?