The film follows the exploits of Haver as a chorus girl turned major star (a transition that is cleverly handled in a musical number played out during the credits), who seeks to escape the hustle and bustle of show business by buying a house in the country. Her new neighbor turns out to be Dailey, a widower with a somewhat bull-headed son, winningly played by Billy Gray, pre-Father Knows Best. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Dailey and Haver will soon become romantically involved, though the film takes some interesting detours along the way, including Gray's conflicting emotions over seeing his father, who has been his sole "property" for so long, suddenly taken with, of all things, a woman. The supporting cast includes Irish tenor Dennis Day as Haver's business manager and a charming Cara Williams as Haver's best friend and Day's love interest.

The pluses of this production are above average production design, albeit all studio bound, brilliant orchestrations by the always reliable Earle Hagen, as well as unifying underscoring by Cyril Mockridge, and uniformly pleasant performances by the leads. The song score is a hit-and-miss affair, with Mack Gordon's lyrics frequently outshining Josef Myrow's tunes, which, while lush in that early 50s way, tend to be forgotten almost as soon as they've been heard. There are some wonderful exceptions, however: "I'd Rather Have a Pal than a Gal" is a small masterpiece of both writing and staging, as Dailey and Gray clean up the kitchen while doing a little male bonding, and "I'm Mad About the Girl Next Door," a lilting jazz waltz that is the only thing close to a standard to emerge from the score. Though "Nowhere Guy" shows that the Fox honchos were certainly not blind to the balletic elements Freed, Kelly and Minnelli were interpolating in their Metro features, while the dance elements and Hagen's brilliant arrangement are outstanding, it all comes to an unexpectedly and abruptly hilarious crash landing with Haver pounding her head repeatedly in time with a drum. The score is not particularly well-integrated into Isobel Lennart's screenplay (and Lennart should have known better, as she demonstrated some years later with Funny Girl), with gimmicks like Day clinking tones out of champagne glasses as the intro to a song that seems frankly shoe-horned into the proceedings. There is a still a good degree of creativity at hand in some of the numbers, as in the aforementioned "Nowhere Guy," where Dailey, who is watching the number (which takes place in a nightclub), looks down to his shadow, which then moves on its own to become part of the number itself.

The film is unusual with its emphasis on character rather than big production numbers, and also for its use of UPA animation in two segments, culled from Dailey's occupation in the film as a comic strip artist. As such a relatively intimate feature, it relies more on actual acting than a lot of musicals, and in this arena it does not disappoint. Dailey is always an affable screen presence, with just a hint of danger and pain lying barely beneath the placid surface, and that persona suits him well here. Haver obviously had the goods, both looks and dance wise (she's dubbed here, as she was in most of her films), to have become Fox's biggest pre-Monroe star, had she not decided first to try becoming a nun, and then later, after having left the convent, marrying Fred MacMurray. However, the film belongs largely to Gray, who avers in one of the extras that The Day the Earth Stood Still was his favorite film role, but who might want to revisit this performance to see some of his finest work.

The DVD

Video:
Fox has spent a lot of time and effort restoring a lot of its vintage product, especially commendable when one considers that a title like The Girl Next Door is most likely never going to top the bestseller lists. The 1.33:1 Technicolor image looks simply spectacular--sharp and well defined with an excellent, "real" Technicolor palette.

Sound:
The remastered Dolby 2.0 soundtrack sounds similarly excellent. Dialogue is placed front and center for the most part, with more separation being accorded the musical numbers. The Spanish Dolby soundtrack is pretty bad, by comparison--obviously second generation (at least) with noticeable compression and hiss.

Extras:
Several nice, if too short, featurettes dot the landscape here, including a retrospective of the film itself, and short biographies of Dailey and Gray. May I just say that if I never see or hear Professor Drew Casper again (with his breathless alacrity as he states such obvious tripe as "Dailey could act!"), it will be too soon, and, while I'm in a disparaging mood, someone should tell American Musicals expert Miles Krueger to spiff himself up a little before being filmed--his on screen interviews here and on several other DVDs, while at least knowledgeable and less trite than Casper, simply define unkempt appearance.

Final Thoughts:
Fox certainly deserves kudos for not giving this the bargain basement treatment. The film looks and sounds wonderful and will be a treat for a select few.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet