When My Baby Smiles at Me is a 1948 American musical film directed by Walter Lang and starring Betty Grable and Dan Dailey. Released by 20th Century Fox, it is the third film based on the popular 1927 Broadway play Burlesque, the others being The Dance of Life (1929) and Swing High, Swing Low (1937). When My Baby Smiles at Me is the first (and to date, the only) full Technicolor film version of that play; The Dance of Life had several Technicolor sequences, but they are no longer extant.
| When My Baby Smiles at Me | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Walter Lang |
| Written by | Lamar Trotti (screenplay) Elizabeth Reinhardt (adaptation) George Manker Watters (play) Arthur Hopkins (play) |
| Produced by | George Jessel |
| Starring | Betty Grable Dan Dailey |
| Cinematography | Harry Jackson |
| Edited by | Barbara McLean |
| Music by | Alfred Newman |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3.4 million (US rentals)[2] |
Dan Dailey received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance, but lost to Laurence Olivier for Hamlet.
Plot
editBonny Kane and "Skid" Johnson are vaudeville performers in the 1920s. The two of them suffer marital difficulties when Skid gets an offer to appear on Broadway, while Bonny gets left behind on the road. Things get worse with Skid's increasing drinking problem, and the fact that the press has reported him to be spending a lot of time with his pretty co-star.
Cast
edit- Betty Grable as Bonny Kane
- Dan Dailey as "Skid" Johnson
- Jack Oakie as Bozo Evans
- June Havoc as Gussie Evans
- Richard Arlen as Harvey Howell
- James Gleason as Lefty Moore
Reception
editWhen My Baby Smiles at Me was 20th Century Fox's highest grossing film of 1948. Grable had been reigning the box office since the beginning of the 1940s, and scored her biggest triumph with Mother Wore Tights the previous year. It opened at the Fox Theatre in San Francisco and grossed $30,000 for the week.[3] After four weeks it rose to number one at the US box office.[4]
Dailey received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in this film, while Grable did not. In fact many thought she should have at least received an Oscar nomination for Mother Wore Tights.
Adaptations
editWhen My Baby Smiles at Me was presented on Screen Directors Playhouse May 5, 1950, with Grable reprising her role from the motion picture.[5]
The film was parodied as "When My Baby Laughs at Me", on The Carol Burnett Show (1975 - Episode 8.18), with Carol Burnett as "Bunny" (Bonnie), Rock Hudson as "Skip" (Skid), and Vicki Lawrence as "Gussie".
It was also referenced in commercials for Peter Paul's No Jelly candy bar (1972).
References
edit- ^ When My Baby Smiles at Me at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
- ^ "Top Grossers of 1948", Variety 5 January 1949 p 46
- ^ "'Baby' Smiles on Frisco, Lusty $30,000; 'Belinda' Torrid $28,000, 'Starr's' 16G". Variety. November 10, 1948. p. 12. Retrieved December 29, 2023 – via Archive.org.
- ^ "National Boxoffice Survey". Variety. December 1, 1948. p. 3. Retrieved December 28, 2023 – via Archive.org.
- ^ "Those Were the Days". Nostalgia Digest. 38 (3): 32–39. Summer 2012.
