Word: niven
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Almost without exception, the actors do injustice to their already ineffectual lines. Only David Niven, in an unrewarding bit part, shows any knowledge of acting. Early movies don't have to be bad movies...
...confusion centers in the analyst (David Niven), the figure whose bubble reputation the satiric point is apparently intended to prick. But the bubble is never blown; from the first scene, Niven is represented as little more than a passive scratching-post for a pack of pampered cats. But suddenly, in the last scenes, he turns into the father image-sober, sound, sententious, and yet as modern as a cubist grandfather's clock. In the meantime, the moviegoer has weltered through a series of vaguely amusing scenes that go nowhere almost as fast as the well-known labyrinth dream...
Aided by a witty script adapted from the Broadway play, the small cast carries off the film with a light touch and rapid pace, yet with a certain feel for real situations and natural reactions. David Niven is marvelously and hilariously restrained as the psychoanalyst who is not quite so tolerant of human inconsistencies when he discovers that his own fiancee has had a very interesting past. Barbara Rush plays his slightly tarnished True Love with typical feminine capriciousness. Ginger Rogers is very funny indeed as the wife who regularly pours out her troubles to her psychoanalyst...
Bundle of Joy (RKO Radio). The original of this movie, released in 1939, was called Bachelor Mother, a title bearing such intimations of immorality that the studio had to fight the censors to retain it. The movie was a spoof of bastardy. But with Ginger Rogers and David Niven starred in it and with Hollywood's boy wonder of the day, 26-year-old Garson Kanin, directing, the spoof was wholesome, human and hilarious. Bundle of Joy is wholesome. It is an energetic attempt to prove that what was done so deftly in the '30s, Hollywood...
...moreover, is a deft, witty spoof of Verne's book, which in turn was a spoof of the English, so that the moviegoer often experiences the refined pleasures of laughing at a man who is laughing at somebody else. The main roles are competently carried out by David Niven, Shirley MacLaine and the late Robert Newton, and most of the big stars are effectively scattered about the picture, like sequins on an elephant. But the star of stars is the famous Mexican comic, Cantinflas. In his first U.S. movie, he gives delightful evidence that he may well...