I confess to a soft spot for this candy-box confection. Ordinarily 10 minutes of Debbie- Reynolds-spunk is enough to last me for 2 hours. But I've got to admit she brings genuine verve and sparkle to the role. Never mind that Dick Powell is closer to 50 than the movie- claimed 35, and at least twice as old as the juvenile Reynolds. Fortunately their clinches are kept to a minimum, even as the under-age innuendo is exploited to the hilt for titillated 1950's audiences. If the plot skirts the bounds of good taste, director Tashlin keeps things from straying with a speeded-up pace that allows little pause for contemplation. I would love to have been in on the meetings where studio exec's kicked this premise around for the censors.
Anyway, Powell is appropriately dour as the sober-sided screenwriter, while Glenda Farrell gets the kind of caustic role that would later suit Thelma Ritter to the proverbial T. And, of course, there's Alvy Moore looking like a college freshman and getting all the clever wisecracks, even if in real life he was a veteran of the bloody WWII battle for Iwo Jima! Too bad Anne Francis doesn't get more screen time as "the other woman". But then she does show why she deserved that drop-dead sexy outfit she wore in Forbidden Planet (1956). Cult director Tashlin manages a few of trademark effects from his cartoonist past--- note Reynolds cooling off her libido with a swinging freezer door, and, of course, the fantasy sequences that fit in perfectly.
All in all, I think RKO got away with one-- had the movie been handled less deftly, someone might have landed in 1954's county clink.
