By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

A more-of-the-same retread of 1951’s On Moonlight Bay, By the Light of the Silvery Moon tells the story of Marjorie Winfield (Doris Day) and her on-again, off-again betrothal to boyfriend, Bill Sherman (Gordon MacRae) who has returned from the Great War to a picket-fenced small town in Indiana. Concurrently, due to a misunderstanding Marjorie’s bank manager Dad (Leon Ames, as ever, playing the stick-in-the-mud paterfamilias) is suspected of cheating on his wife (Rosemary DeCamp) with a French “actress”.

Despite the Edwardian setting (according to the opening credits the script draws on Booth Tarkington's "Penrod" stories ) the concerns are pure 1950s with the overarching  preoccupation with marriage and respectability being slightly questioned by a sense of burgeoning female independence.  Although genial enough the thin storyline is dragged on far too long with an abundance of Zeitgeist-typical contrivance. 

On the upside, nostalgia buffs will enjoy the chocolate box production design and Day and MacRae (although both in their early thirties and too old for their roles) both have fine voices with sing-along chestnuts such as 'If You Were the Only Boy in the World', 'Ain't We Got Fun' and, of course, the title song, receiving pleasing treatments.  

 

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