Let’s Make It Legal *** (1951, Claudette Colbert, Macdonald Carey, Zachary Scott, Robert Wagner, Barbara Bates, Marilyn Monroe) – Classic Movie Review 7600

Let’s Make It Legal (1951) is a fairly bubbly and charming Fifties romantic comedy film, with a good cast giving it a boost. Claudette Colbert and Macdonald Carey star, and Marilyn Monroe has a brief appearance as a manhunting sexpot.

Director Richard Sale’s 1951 Let’s Make It Legal is a merely average, fairly bubbly and often quite charming Fifties romantic comedy, with a good cast giving it a boost.

Claudette Colbert and Macdonald Carey star as long-time marrieds Miriam and Hugh Halsworth, who finally decide to call it a day after more than 20 years together, but their married daughter and her husband, Barbara and Jerry Denham (Barbara Bates and Robert Wagner) have other ideas for them. And then a former beau of Colbert’s, Victor Macfarland (Zachary Scott), arrives on the scene.

The effortlessly stylish Colbert makes playing this kind of froth seem easy, but the other actors have to work harder to try to ingratiate and the effort shows. Look out for Marilyn Monroe in a fairly brief but entertaining early screen appearance, as the manhunting sexpot Joyce Mannering.

Claudette Colbert and Zachary Scott in Let’s Make It Legal (1951).

Also in the cast are Frank Cady, Jim Hayward, Carol Savage, Paul Gerrits, Betty Jane Bowen, Vicki Raff, Ralph Sanford, Harry Denny, Harry Harvey Sr, Kathleen Freeman, James Magill, Jack Mather, Renny McEvoy, the Chicago-born character actor Roger Moore (1900–1999), Michael Rois, Frank Sully, Wilson Wood, Beverly Thompson, Abe Dinovitch and Joan Fisher.

Let’s Make It Legal is directed by Richard Sale, runs 77 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by F Hugh Herbert and I A L Diamond, based on a story by Mortimer Braus, is shot in black and white by Lucien Ballard, is produced by Robert Bassler, is scored by Cyril J Mockridge, and is designed by Lyle R Wheeler.

It took several years for Monroe to reach the top, starting in 1947 with Dangerous Years, playing Evie – Waitress at the Gopher Hole, followed by her one-line bit part in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). Niagara was her star breakthrough in 1953.

Robert Wagner made his uncredited film debut in The Happy Years (1950) and broke through in the same year as Monroe, with his first starring role in Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7600

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com