Bernardine ** (1957, Pat Boone, Terry Moore, Janet Gaynor, Dean Jagger, Dick Sargent, James Drury) – Classic Movie Review 12,096

Director Henry Levin’s 1957 Bernardine stars Pat Boone in his film début in this dim and distant teen comedy about the pains and passions of young lovers, especially Sanford Wilson (Dick Sargent)’s for telephone gal Jean Cantrick (Terry Moore), as high-school seniors invent a girl named Bernardine to muddle the phone operators.

20th Century Fox’s Cinemascope American musical comedy film stars Pat Boone as Arthur ‘Beau’ Beaumont, Terry Moore as Jean Cantrick, Janet Gaynor as Mrs Ruth Wilson, Dean Jagger as J. Fullerton Weldy, Dick Sargent [Richard Sargent] as Sanford Wilson, and James Drury as Beau’s older brother Lt. Langley Beaumont.

Some gentle laughs and cosy attitudes are on show, while clean-cut Boone does a lot of sweet singing as befits a non-rebel (‘Bernardine’, ‘Love Letters in the Sand’, ‘Technique’), and 30s star Janet Gaynor is a welcome guest (as Sanford’s mom, Mrs Ruth Wilson) in her sole film part after 1938.

Bernardine is pleasant enough and it did well. Cost: $1.23 million. Box office: $3.75 million (US).

Also in the cast are Ronnie Burns as Griner, Walter Abel as Mr Beaumont, Natalie Schafer as Mrs Madge Beaumont, Isabel Jewell as Mrs McDuff, Edith Angold as Hilda, Val Benedict as Morgan Friedelhauser, Emestine Wade as Cleo, Russ Conway as Mr. Mason, Thomas Pittman as George Olson, Jack Costanzo as Himself, the orchestra leader, and Hooper Dunbar as Vernon Kinswood.

Theodore Reeves’s screenplay is based on the 1952 play by Denver playwright Mary Coyle Chase, who also wrote the 1944 Broadway play Harvey.

Pat Boone’s version of ‘Love Letters in the Sand’ became a major US hit in June and July 1957, with five weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 100. The title song ‘Bernardine’, with words and music by Johnny Mercer, was a also hit for Boone, mainly because it was the flip side of his ‘Love Letters in the Sand’ hit.

Boone tested for both Beaumont and Sanford, but was cast as Beaumont, played on stage by John Kerr, leaving Sargent to have his first important film part as Sanford, the film’s leading role.

It was shot from 4 February 1957 to 27 March 1957. It was released on 24 July 1957.

Terry Moore (born Helen Luella Koford on 7 January 1929) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). She was still filming at age 90 in 2019.

Elia Kazan cast Moore in the female lead for Man on a Tightrope (1953). Then 20th Century Fox gave her a contract and the female lead in Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953), followed by King of the Khyber Rifles (1953), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Shack Out on 101 (1955), Portrait of Alison (1955), Between Heaven and Hell (1956), Bernardine (1957), Peyton Place (1957), A Private’s Affair (1959) and Cast a Long Shadow (1959).

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,096

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