Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Anymore *** (1944, Simone Simon, James Ellison, William Terry, Robert Mitchum) – Classic Movie Review 10,545

Director Joe May’s 1944 black-and-white wartime housing shortage comedy-romance Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Anymore [And So They Were Married] stars William Terry as the titular Johnny Moore, who joins the army, newly enlisted in the Marines. His buddy young defence worker Kathie Aumont (Simone Simon) borrows his Washington D C flat, which is invaded by various other male friend odd sorts to whom he had also previously given keys.

[Spoiler alert] Three of the visiting soldiers fall in love with Kathie and she falls for two of them, Johnny and the cute and considerate one of the key-holders, Mike O’Brien (James Ellison), and this brightly delivered daffy comedy finishes merrily in marriage.

The familiar farcical situation offers considerable laughs thanks to the amusing banter in Philip Yordan and John H Kafka’s entertaining writing (based on an original short story by Alice Means Reeve), and a clutch of very pleasant performances, providing much charm. Arriving late on in the film’s last 20 minutes, Mitchum glides through the piece’s climax with panache as CPO Jeff Daniels, a soldier desperate to use the apartment.

Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is made by the King Brothers and released through Monogram Pictures. It is an early film for Robert Mitchum, who next went on to stardom in When Strangers Marry (1944), also made for the King Brothers. He had already made an incredible 20 films in his first year in movies – 1943. The brothers later tried to enforce a claim that they had the actor under a multi-picture contract, but he made no further films for them.

In an interestingly weird comedy-fantasy element, the superstitious Kathie is pursued by a mischievous Bad Luck Gremlin named B.O. Rumpelstilzken (played by Jerry Maren, voiced by an uncredited Mel Blanc) whom only she can see and who does mischievous things like altering her alarm clock.

Horror film regular Rondo Hatton speaks no lines and gets a laugh merely by his brief surprise appearance as B Graves, Undertaker. Billy Laughlin, playing a child called Jerry Malone who lives in Kathie’s apartment building, was well known as Froggy in the Our Gang shorts, his only other films.

Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was reissued and renamed And So They Were Married, with Mitchum getting co-starring billing after his sudden stardom.

Also in the cast are Minna Gombell, Chick Chandler, Alan Dinehart, Gladys Blake, Dorothy Granger, Grady Sutton, Fern Emmett, Chester Clute, Janet Shaw, Jerry Maren and Douglas Fowley.

It is the final film directed by Austrian-American director Joe May. Born Joseph Otto Mandl (7 November 1880 – 29 April 1954), he was one of the pioneers of German cinema. In 1933 he and his actress wife Mia May emigrated to the US. After retiring as a director, he managed the Blue Danube Restaurant in Los Angeles.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,545

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