NICE GIRL?: Blu-ray (Universal, 1941) Universal Home Video

The Deanna Durbin gristmill was in full swing by 1941, the year of director, William A. Seiter’s Nice Girl? – a middling effort from Universal, whose shameless exploitation of such raw talent, ultimately resulted in a rather tepid spate of pedestrian fare that, nevertheless, turned a tidy profit for the studio - Uni’s only genuine concern during increasingly cash-strapped times. Indeed, Durbin’s arrival on the backlot is credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. A pause here to consider what the career of this winsome soprano might have been had Louis B. Mayer hung on to Durbin after her brief debut opposite Judy Garland in the 2-reeler, Every Sunday (1936).  But by the time Mayer came around to it, Durbin’s options had lapsed, and quickly to be picked up by Universal instead. Born Edna Mae Durbin, the Canadian chanteuse possessed a technical range to rival MGM’s then reigning diva, Jeanette MacDonald. And certainly, Mayer was not willing to let another opportunity like hers pass, later hiring both Kathryn Grayson and, more directly, Jane Powell to fill this void in his pantheon of musical stars. Durbin, however, owed much of her earliest successes to producer, Joseph Pasternak, without whose creative aegis (Pasternak moved to Metro in 1941), her movies increasingly became less engaging and enjoyable. But Durbin could still emote, proving real/reel talent possessed the liquidity to toggle between popular standards and operatic arias. And Uni, in fact, owed everything to Durbin, whose lavishly appointed debut, Three Smart Girls (1936, and ironically, a project planned with Judy Garland in mind) singularly put their balance sheets back in the black. By 1938, Durbin was also an Oscar-winning child star. So, her cache was formidable. Yet, it is a genuine shame Durbin was never allowed to ‘mature’ from the studio’s hermetically sealed impressions of her squeaky-clean wholesomeness. To be fair, the powers that be did afford her at least two opportunities to try: 1944’s Christmas Holiday and 1945’s Lady on a Train – both, box office bombs. And Durbin, seeming to have had quite enough of Hollywood by 1949, entered a period of self-imposed exile, wedded to producer/director, Charles Henri David in 1950, and thereafter, granting only one public interview in which she allowed herself the luxury to reflect upon her career…in 1983!!!

Nice Girl? arrives in Durbin’s spate of hits, arguably, at the beginning of the end – her early promise as the pint-sized pretty in One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), undergoing a miraculous transformation in Mad About Music (1938), immediately followed by That Certain Age (1938), Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), and First Love (1939), all produced by Pasternak, the bulk of which were directed by Henry Koster. Pasternak, however, was very circumspect about the notion he had ‘discovered’ Durbin. “Deanna's genius had to be unfolded,” Pasternak once suggested, “…but it was hers and hers alone. Always has been, always will be. No one can take credit for discovering her. You can't hide that kind of light under a bushel. You just can't, no matter how hard you try.” Durbin ostensibly gave up an opportunity to become an opera diva when she passed on a personal invitation to audition from the Metropolitan Opera’s general music secretary, Cesar Sturani. At the time, this decision was ultimately seen as creative suicide, since opera and the movies were irreconcilable in terms of their artistic merit, the same way the movies would eventually adopt the same rather chichi attitude towards television some years later, as their lesser. Indeed, even Uni’s vocal coach, Andrés de Segurola believed Durbin had the voice, as well as the temerity to succeed on the stage. Uni, however, was not willing to let her go, even forcing Durbin to depart from her lucrative radio show with Eddie Cantor (1936-38) to honor her commitments to them.

All stars and studios inevitably go through this honeymoon period before the frost settles in and the stars begin to make demands on where their futures are headed. In Durbin’s case, after It Started With Eve (1941), with Pasternak’s departure to MGM, Durbin dug in her heels, refusing to partake of the studio’s next planned project for her – They Lived Alone – and was promptly suspended. Nevertheless, Durbin won that battle when Uni agreed to shelve the picture, and also, granted her approval of all future directors, stories, and songs. With such autonomy came responsibility. Yet, Durbin proved up to the challenge, continuing to reign at the box office in movies that, increasingly, carried her personal stamp of approval from the top down – a forthright business acumen Joseph Cotten, her costar in Hers To Hold (1943) found both ‘note-’ and ‘praise’ worthy. Alas, Durbin’s determination to become a ‘serious’ actress were limited by the appeal of her fans, who shunned such efforts, but embraced her in the glossy Technicolor confection, Can’t Help Singing (1944). The real/reel end for Deanna Durbin came with Uni’s merger in 1946, the new regime indulging in a creative purge of what had made the studio prior to their arrival. Durbin would stay on for four more musicals – a genre, the new management had virtually no stomach to support. And although the second-highest-paid actress in the U.S. (only Bette Davis earned more) – and Durbin would, in fact, surpass Davis a scant year later – both in salary and fan club popularity, just a year thereafter, her box office supremacy waned with an untidy lawsuit perpetuated by her alma mater, settled with an agreement to make 3 more movies for the newly amalgamated Universal-International – none, ever coming to fruition.

Pasternak desperately tried to dissuade Durbin from her decision to retire from the movies in 1949. Smartly, perhaps, she reasoned her time had come to move on. “I can't run around being Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song—the highest-paid star with the poorest material.” But Durbin’s headstrong nature also caused her to pass on several major projects that might have prolonged, and, in fact, propelled her career into the stratosphere for another few decades. She turned down the leads in Kiss Me Kate, The Student Prince and My Fair Lady (stage productions and movies) and deliberately set about to distance her authentic self from the screen persona carefully concocted for her to embody at Universal. Nevertheless, her legacy continued to shine in her absence, with rising talents repeatedly to reference her work for their own inspiration. In Winnipeg, she was christened ‘the golden girl’ – as a counterpoint reference to a famous city landmark, ‘the golden boy.’  Alas, in one of the great tragedies of the modern era, much of her filmic legacy – at least, as far as original camera negatives are concerned, as well as original recordings – was destroyed in Uni’s hellish backlot fire in 2008.

Nice Girl? opens with Hector (Walter Brennan), a blabbermouth postman who reads everybody's mail. At present, he is delivering to the Dana household, a chance to spoon with his love, Cora (Helen Broderick), the house maid. The family’s patriarch, Prof. Oliver Dana (Robert Benchley) is the stuffy, bumbling academic sort while eldest daughter, Sylvia (Anne Gwynne) is an aspiring actress and youngest, Nancy (Ann Gillis), is boy-crazy, with an enviable line of suitors to prove it. The middle sister is Jane (Deanna Durbin), the proverbial ‘nice girl’, making her entrance, trilling in almost Disney-esque fashion, the song, ‘Perhaps’ to furry little rabbits – the experimental animals used to test Oliver’s new diet. In short order, we also meet Jane’s sweetheart, Don Webb (Robert Stack), an avid car buff. Enter aspiring scientist, Richard Calvert (Franchot Tone) whose arrival sets the hearts of all three Dana girls aflutter.

Having given us the batting roster, from here Nice Girl? falls into the familiar trap of becoming just a series of vignettes to allow the romantic rivalry between Don, Rich and Jane to ensue. A 4th of July gathering turns awkward when Don magnanimously lends Jane his car to drop Richard off at the train depot. Instead, she elects to drive him all the way to New York herself.  Alas, Jane’s ardent attempt at seduction does a belly-flop when, after changing into Richard’s sister’s pajamas, both realize that despite her zeal, she is – quite simply – a ‘nice girl’ whose proverbial ‘spots’ will never change. She cannot play the vamp. Alas, unthinkingly, Jane drives home still wearing the pajamas. As the car runs out of gas, Jane’s appearance lends credence to rumors she has spent the night with a man…shocking!!! And thus, Jane’s arrival home is met with much skepticism and gossip.  Oliver, however, knows his daughter better. After receiving clarification from Richard as to what happened, he knows Jane could never behave badly. Now, more misdirection ensues. Oliver comes to believe Richard and Jane are engaged. While this quashes the rumors, it sours Don on Jane, particularly after he suggests Jane is not Richard’s type and she vehemently insists the rumors of their engagement are true, just to tick him off. To smooth over the lies with a bit of truth, Jane asks Richard to fake a public argument so they can severe their ‘engagement’. Rushing to explain everything to Don, Jane learns he has enlisted in the army. Nevertheless, Don forgives Jane, affirming his love for her as she prepares to sing ‘Thank You America’ at the army base to galvanize the troops. Aside: for the British release of Nice Girl? the song ‘They’ll Always Be an England’ was substituted as an obvious morale-booster for the U.K. where Durbin’s fan base was epic.

Nice Girl? did phenomenal box office on both sides of the Atlantic, despite the contrivances in Richard Connell and Gladys Lehman’s fairly predictable screenplay. Today, it plays as a fairly congenial, but not terribly prepossessing, light and frothy programmer. Durbin is, of course, the star, and the responsibility for all the heavy lifting rests squarely on her slender shoulders. Her singing is unquestionably beyond compare. And her acting, while never quite up to the same level, is nevertheless competent and passable. Robert Stack, then being groomed as the sexy male heartthrob, offers solid support, while Robert Benchley is at his usual self-deprecating best as the befuddled figure of fun.  It all makes for a quaint little nothing, immaculately tricked out in Jack Otterson’s production design, expertly lensed in B&W by cinematographer, Joseph A. Valentine. Nice Girl? won’t win any awards for originality, but it nevertheless clings together as a step above the usual flimsy fluff Uni was pumping out with Durbin’s name above the title. It has some tenderness to recommend it too, and some genuine heart.  In the final analysis, Nice Girl? is representative of the better half of Durbin’s Universal tenure.

Were that we could say the same about the Blu-ray. Universal’s original plan for Deanna Durbin was to dump her movies in box sets marketed via Kino Lorber. Alas, the first set performed so poorly, neither elected to continue. So, Uni has steadily been parceling off the Durbin flicks, one at a time, via their own distribution, in bare bones hi-def offers, culling the magic from decades’ old transfers, originally created for the DVD releases from their now defunct ‘vault series’. The results here are about what you would expect. Owing to the aforementioned loss of original elements via the 2008 fire, what we have here is a video master from a print master, with amplified grain and boosted contrast, plus a barrage of age-related artifacts that could have been massaged with some digital tinkering, but instead have been allowed to proliferate in yet another port over of the same flawed elements Universal has little to zero interest in restoring. For all this short-sightedness, Nice Girl? fares about average with some obvious dupes peppered in for good measure. The image is frequently soft, though close-ups occasionally reveal some solid detail in skin and hair. Again, Uni’s efforts on deep catalog releases represent a bottom-scrapping effort, with no aspirations to even attempt to properly curate or asset manage their formidable archive for future generations to enjoy in optimal quality. The 1.0 DTS soundtrack is competent, but that’s about all. This disc, like Uni’s other skin-flint efforts, boots up immediate and plays without the benefit of menus. No extras – big surprise!  Bottom line: recommended for content only.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

0

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