User Reviews

I have been watching a lot of 30s and 40s movies over the past several months and this has been one of the more entertaining ones. As other reviewers have stated, Lana Turner handles comedy very well, the supporting cast is excellent and the storyline has some "weight" to it. I like Robert Young but did have to suspend belief to buy into Lana Turner being attracted to him. He handled the comedy well but was a little lacking in the romantic storyline... Otherwise the casting was well done. One reviewer also made reference to Marilyn Monroe - I know I did a double take a few times noticing the resemblance between Lana Turner and Marilyn. And Lana Turner definitely could act. Bottom line - this movie is worth the time investment to watch.

Someone at MGM must have been working overtime to come up with a wild and wacky screwball comedy which is a breath of fresh air when compared to the many mediocre misfires they made. Other than a few Myrna Loy & William Powell/Katharine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy pairings, MGM's strongest suit was not in comedy, but a few, this included, managed to break that streak.

Lana Turner, desperate to get out of her small Hudson River Valley town (which seems to be as crowded as Manhattan) fakes a suicide note and ends up faking amnesia due to a hysterical circumstance beyond her control when she tries to place an advertisement in a New York City newspaper. This leads her to getting involved in an old kidnapping case where she convinces brittle Walter Brennan and his long-time nurse Dame May Witty that she is the long lost daughter that was kidnapped as a child. However, her former boss, Robert Young, recognizes her picture in the newspaper, and having been accused of causing her to apparently commit suicide, follows her to the Big Apple, threatening to reveal all and have her jailed on charges of fraud. This creates more confusion and some wacky situations, resulting in of course, that tried and true MGM plot twist: romance.

Turner takes on the type of role that Deanna Durbin was doing over at Universal, playing basically a trouble-maker whose schemes somehow seem to work in her favor and fix everybody's problems. Not known for comedy, Turner proves herself to be quite adept, and it is a shame that for the majority of her next decade at MGM, she was cast mainly in glamorous dramas, obviously considered too much of a lady to slip on banana peels or commit other various pratfalls. Young, adept in both comedy and drama, is also very funny, with portly Eugene Palette in fine support as the newspaper magnate who is determined to find out Turner's identity at any cost. Florence Bates and Almira Sessions have nice bits as well.

This is memorable for a sequence where Turner makes a banana split blindfolded, and later when Young goes into a Harold Lloyd bit, almost falling off of a balcony at Symphony Hall. I attribute to the comedy here working because of the presence of a rather forgotten master of the genre, Wesley Ruggles, who sets up the zany plot line, builds up the romance, and ends with a bit of drama that is never cloying.

Make no mistake, this is not a "great" movie, but it's pretty decent escapist fare worth watching at least once. Actually, the plot is pretty decent, but over time there are spots that just aren't very logical, so the picture suffers from that viewpoint. Get beyond that, and you have a comedy that had greater potential.

Lana Turner is a bored 21 year old in a dull job in a small town. She leaves an ambiguous note, making people think she has committed suicide, and heads for NYC. In a quirk accident she is injured and is thought to be an amnesia victim...which she then decides to play along with, and a newspaper runs a feature trying to identify her. Is she a rich heiress? She pretends to be so...the daughter of a rather refined Walter Brennan! Meanwhile, Robert Young is trying to desperately find her...and falls in love with her unexpectedly.

Turner is good here, and so is Robert Young. In fact, this is one of his better movie roles. It's a very different role than we usually see Walter Brennan in...and it's rather nice to see him shaved. The rest of the cast is pleasant enough.

You won't order this for your DVD shelf, but it's pleasant enough for one viewing.

Lana Turner, young and nubile, is a soda jerk who is fed up with her job. When she whimsically demonstrates how undemanding her work is, she prepared banana splits and chocolate sodas wearing a blindfold. Everyone in the store applauds, except her boss, manager Robert Young, who fires her.

Turner decides to leave the hick town in the Hudson Valley, move to New York City, and begin a new life as -- well, as somebody else. She spends all her money constructing her new identity. She sheds her name, her cheerless garments, and her brunette hair, which was actually rather attractive. That is, when she spun around and her comely do flared I could feel my toes tingle slightly.

Alas, she leaves Bunkum Falls without telling anyone, and the note of departure she sends to her friend behind the counter is misinterpreted as a suicide note. Young, learning of this, believes he was responsible for her death and is filled with remorse,.

Meanwhile, down in New York, now virtually broke and without any ID, Turner is hit on the head and knocked out by a falling paint can while passing a boutique. That's right. A falling paint can. The proprietor, Eugene Palette, is terrified that this well-dressed and expensively groomed woman, obviously some kind of socialite, will sue the pants off his company.

When Turner comes too, stretched out on a lounge in Palette's office, she quickly sizes up the situation and pretends to be amnesic. Somehow, Palette and his worried staff, conclude that she's the long lost daughter of the curmudgeon of a tycoon played by Walter Brennan. He's suspicious. Too many young girls have tried to claim the title of princess before, but by using her wits in an interior monologue, she manages to catch the brass ring.

Then she accidentally bumps into Robert Young, who gawks at her new, glossier presence, and can't decide whether she's really pitiful little Peggy Evans or the glossy patrician he's now stalking. Confusion ensues, followed by happiness.

It's hard to tell how original the story is. There were at the time rumors that Anastasia, the daughter of the murdered Czar of All the Russias, had somehow managed to escape the slaughter and was now traveling incognito. That may have been one inspiration. Another might have been the success of Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve," a few years earlier, which used some of the same players.

It's amusing without being exceptional, and Lana Turner is very attractive indeed, her little-girl voice notwithstanding. You probably won't regret watching it.

I label films that have the lead roles with comedy and crimes as caper comedies. This fits that mold - with Lana Turner's character. One other reviewer had reservations about comedies based on fraud. I agree that that is a tough sale for comedy. Most crime type of films that are good comedies are in the nature of Robin Hood films, or theft, scams or cheating at cards. In such films, the humor is very clear and while the scam or crime is wrong, the movie doesn't send the wrong message or endorse the wrongdoing.

But, "Slightly Dangerous" has two downsides. The first is the fraud and the second is that it toys with deep-seated emotions over the loss of a child - a little girl's disappearance. That makes it tough sailing for comedy. And Walter Brennan portrays the distraught father of 20 some years, Cornelius Burden, very well. He's a man who doesn't smile or laugh a lot. Dame May Whitty is very good too, as Baba, the nurse and nanny who lost the little girl. Their roles are very good for drama, but not comedy. Had this film been billed and promoted as comedy drama, it would have been far more accurate.

And, there otherwise is very little comedy in this film. A scene of a blindfold soda jerk and another with blindfold clerks in the department story are somewhat funny. And, a couple other situations have some humor, usually involving Robert Young's Bob Stuart. But there are few funny lines of dialog.

This movie needed a much better screenplay to be a very good comedy romance. Too many of the scenes seem like quick changes in direction, characters, and story. Lana Turner's Peggy Evans is the most obvious example. In the opening, she is a bitter, dissatisfied, angry person. She's only somewhat calmer when she gets to the city and spends all but her last dollar for a complete makeover. She then connives to find a missing person she can become to strike it rich.

When an accident opens the way for her scheme to work, she is a little dumbfounded and cautious about it, but then plays along. The redeeming part is Turner's superb acting from this point on in showing signs of conflict. One can see that it bothers her to be playing with the emotions of Cornelius Burden and Baba. And all of that is part of drama, not comedy or humor.

Finally, for all her scrapping and efforts to elude Stuart, Peggy's sudden love for Stuart is way too sudden and far out. The film has a hokey ending, and while a happy one for those involved, it's a psychological fairy tale.

This surely isn't a film to recommend for comedy. It gets five stars for the acting that includes some good parts by several supporting actors.

Here are my favorite couple of lines, which show the stretch for comedy in this film.

Peggy Evans, "But you're going to teach me, aren't you?" Bob Stuart, "Everything I know is at your disposal."

Peggy Evans (aka, Carol Burden), "Oh, Johnny." Bob Stuart, "The name is Bob, Carol." Peggy, "The name is Peggy, Johnny."

I liked this movie so much.

Lana Turner was gorgeously cute and it was a very charming comedy in my opinion.

Lana played Peggy Evans a store soda jerk in a New York department store. At the beginning of the movie she is given a merit certificate for being on time for a 1000 days straight. She feels that there is something more for her out in the world. So with a new look and a new name she is walking to the New York Star when disaster strikes - she is hit in the head with a bucket of paint. When she awakes people think she has amnesia and even though she hasn't - she goes along with it.

Lana Turner was a much better actress than she was given credit for and really excelled in these frothy comedies.

A very funny sequence at the start of the movie has Lana say "I can do this job blindfolded" and proceeds to make a banana split that way. This is what causes all the trouble in the first place.

Robert Young is also in it as Bob Stuart, her boss at the department store and the only one who knows her secret. I movie I would recommend.