My Blue Heaven (1950)

My Blue Heaven (1950) 

Directed by Henry Koster

Screenplay by Claude Binyon and Lamar Trotti, story by S. K. Lauren

Music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ralph Blane

Runtime: 1 hr, 36 min

To engage in broad generalizations, there are two ways that a musical may integrate songs into the production.  One way is to make the numbers integral parts of the story telling procedure, and the other is to use the numbers as set pieces around which a completely unrelated plot is built.  The second may seem pointless, but it does have its advantages.  If either the music or the story falters, the other may counterbalance things and still make for an enjoyable experience.  Of course, if neither is particularly strong, then the film becomes all the more painful to watch.

My Blue Heaven, sad to say, is one of those films which falls short in both areas.  Directed by Henry Koster and starring 1940s pin-up girl Betty Grable, My Blue Heaven has its plot centered on a couple’s attempts to adopt a child.  Grable plays Kitty Moran, who, alongside her husband Jack (Dan Dailey), have a singing show on the radio which later moves to television.  Kitty, when the film begins, has just gotten news she is pregnant, but a car crash results in a miscarriage, and Kitty is told she will be unable to give birth again.

At this point in the film, a troubling development emerged for me.  The tone of My Blue Heaven is almost comically inconsistent.  In case the miscarriage development gives the impression that this is a purely serious film, I should tell you that the car crash follows both a trivial (if fun) song about income tax deductions and a jovial baby shower sequence.  The shifts between lighthearted fun and melodrama—yes, “shifts”, this happens so often I lost count—prevented me from either enjoying the dance numbers or taking anything that was going on seriously.

The uncontrollable tonal shifts are a shame, because at first it appeared that the film could work as a pleasant if unfulfilling distraction.  Grable’s Kitty is a likeable enough character, and her relationship with Jack doesn’t feel forced at any point.  (Likely helping this is that My Blue Heaven was the third film that Grable and Dailey did together).  In addition, while he soon wears out his welcome, their friend Walter Pringle (David Wayne) provides some appreciated snarky banter—apparently, the end of the world includes South Pacific playing to empty theaters.

Unfortunately, the quest to adopt a baby soon takes over.  Kitty and Jack follow two main threads to get a child.  The first involves trying to adopt from a legitimate agency, overseen by the absurdly old-fashioned Mrs. Johnston (Laura Pierpont).  The second—and far, far more uncomfortable—sequence revolves around an under-the-table adoption of a girl from the backroom of a roadside diner.  Neither goes according to plan at first, but in the case of that second strategy, one might wish that at no point it did.

Indeed, about halfway through the film, I had a hard time swallowing what was occurring on screen.  Some was discomfort, some was incredulity.  On the side of discomfort, joining the shady adoption dealings, is the fact that Selma (Louise Beavers), the only black person in this film’s universe, is naturally a maid.  I get that this was pre-Civil Rights Movement and that it might be unfair to judge a film with present-day societal standards, but when I hear a semi-frivolous black woman scared after the “poh-lice” get involved, there’s only so much I can stomach.

The racial element got me groaning, but that was tempered by remembering that this was 1950.  The plot developments, on the other hand, had me yelling at the television.  These occur in the last third of the film, so I won’t go into too much detail.  I will say that there’s a totally dumbfounding sequence involving near-adultery and the characters’ reactions to it, and that the resolution to the adoption quest comes so quickly and in such a contrived manner that I’m still not certain if it was meant to be a joke or not.  Suffice to say this is not a screenplay to emulate.

The story clearly falls flat (or up, or diagonally—I don’t even know).  The music does little to salvage things.  I mentioned that “It’s Deductible” was fun, but sad to say the music just declines from there.  Tunes such as “The Friendly Islands” and “Don’t Rock the Boat, Dear” either go on for too long or lack any melodic punch to be memorable.  In fact, the only consistently good element to the musical parts was Dan Dailey’s dancing.  He’s no Gene Kelly, to be sure, but he does maintain a level of energy that, frankly, the material does not merit.

That My Blue Heaven goes so far off the rails is a bit baffling to me.  After all, this is a film that clearly strives to do nothing deeper than entertain the audience for an hour and a half.  If this had to be a film about a couple trying to adopt children, fine.  Babies are cute, right?  Working that plotline into a musical should not have been so difficult.  So why on earth did the film’s creators feel the need juxtapose overly-precious animal reaction shots with miscarriages and adultery?  I’m not sure what I would change if I were the director—where the hell would I start?