When My Baby Smiles at Me *** (1948, Betty Grable, Dan Dailey, Jack Oakie, June Havoc, Richard Arlen, James Gleason) – Classic Movie Review 11,250

‘From Burlesque to Broadway!! 12 show-stopping song hits in the year’s hit-topping musical!’

Director Walter Lang’s 1948 20th Century Fox Technicolor musical film When My Baby Smiles At Me stars Betty Grable and Dan Dailey in their second of four films together, after Mother Wore Tights in 1947. It was nominated for two Oscars: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Dan Dailey) and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Alfred Newman).

Burlesque star Bonnie (Grable) finds her life falling apart when her Broadway showman husband Skid (Dailey) is all but destroyed by the evils of drink and swell-headedness, in this enjoyable if run-of-the-mill third filming of George Manker Watters’s and Arthur Hopkins’s play Burlesque.

Grable is forced to divorce Dailey and comes near to marrying gentleman farmer Arlen, but, despite the rescue efforts of Dailey’s buddy Bozo Evans (Jack Oakie), it is a last-minute intervention of Grable that saves Skid from the skids.

The genial Grable and Dailey work hard to please, and they do, but it is a lesser outing for this amiable musicals partnership. The stars’ rousing turns, especially Dailey’s, and the jolly vaudeville tunes keep it very watchable, but everybody else just seems to be going through the musical motions.

Dailey received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance, but weirdly lost to Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.

It is the third film based on the popular 1927 Broadway play Burlesque, following The Dance of Life (1929) and Swing High, Swing Low (1937). When My Baby Smiles at Me is the only full Technicolor film version of the play but The Dance of Life (which entered the public domain in the US in 1957) had one two-strip Technicolor sequence, which does not survive.

It was 20th Century Fox’s highest grossing film of 1948. Grable had been the reigning box office queen since the beginning of the 1940s, and scored her biggest triumph with Mother Wore Tights (1947) the previous year.

Also in the cast are June Havoc as Gussie Evans, Richard Arlen as Harvey Howell, James Gleason as Lefty Moore, Vanita Wade, Kenny Williams, Jean Wallace, Pati Behrs, Robert Emmett Keane, Jerry Maren, George Lewis, Tom Stevenson, Noel Neill, Dick Wessel, Sam Bernard, Edward Clark, Mauritz Hugo, Robert Karnes, Charles La Torre, J Farrell MacDonald, Lee MacGregor, Hank Mann, Marion Marshall, George Melford, Harry Seymour, Jean Spangler, Tom Stevenson, Charles Tannen and Tiny Timbrell.

Grable and Dailey returned together for My Blue Heaven in 1950 and Call Me Mister in 1951.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,250

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