Has Anybody Seen My Gal? **** (1952, Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Charles Coburn, Lynn Bari, Gigi Perreau) – Classic Movie Review 3479

Director Douglas Sirk’s 1952 comedy features an irresistible star turn by wily performer Charles Coburn as Samuel Fulton, an old millionaire who tests the family of a woman, Harriet Blasidell (Lynn Bari), he once loved and lost to discover whether they are worthy of receiving all his bucks in his will, by anonymously giving them $100,000.

Now snobbish Harriet wants her daughter Millicent (Piper Laurie) to marry into society rather than to wed Dan the handsome soda-fountain man (Rock Hudson).

There are good lead performances from the appealing, fresh-faced stars in the young Laurie and Hudson as well as Bari and Gigi Perreau. And the movie is beautifully filmed by Sirk, making the most of the gorgeous Twenties Vermont setting, with glorious Technicolor cinematography by Clifford Stine and lovely period songs by Henry Mancini and Herman Stein. But, still, despite all these high-quality ingredients, it’s Coburn who is the main attraction.

Joseph Hoffman provides the screenplay from the story by Eleanor H Porter.

James Dean has a bit part as the ‘Youth at the Soda Fountain’. His early film roles were bit parts: before this, a sailor in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis musical comedy Sailor Beware (1952) and a GI in Samuel Fuller’s study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (1951).

Also in the cast are William Reynolds, Larry Gates, Skip Homeier, Paul Harvey, Frank Ferguson, Gloria Holden, Fritz Feld, Forrest Lewis, Fred Nurney, Sally Creighton, Helen Wallace, Willard Waterman, Emory Parnell, Charles Flynn, Barney Phillips, William Fawcett, Edna Holland, Leon Tyler, Charles Williams, Paul Bryar, Joey Ray, Sam Pierce, Harmon Stevens, Lyn White, Donna Leary and Spec O’Donnell.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3479

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