Grab Bag Friday Movie Vault: The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer

It's been a while since I've dipped into the Grab Bag Friday Movie Vault, but since it looks to be a nice, rainy weekend here in Maine, I think it's time to pull out a good old 1940s screwball comedy.

I thought I'd seen just about every Cary Grant movie there is, but Kevin and I stumbled across The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer a couple years ago and laughed our heads off. The movie, written by Sidney Sheldon (creator of the TV series I Dream of Jeannie) won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay back in 1947 and I can certainly see why. It's a riot.

Cary Grant plays a bachelor who lectures about art and is something of a playboy. Through a series of barely plausible events (but who cares!), Grant finds himself obligated to date a love-struck high school girl (Shirley Temple) for a week until her infatuation with him wears off. The fabulous Myrna Loy plays Ms. Temple's protective older sister, a judge who is watching Grant's every move. Let the hilarity begin.

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer is a silly, very funny movie that definitely stands the test of time, if you ask me. It's got all kinds of great physical comedy, and Cary Grant is at his comic best. The more Shirley Temple's character tries to act sophisticated and worldly, the more he puts on a gooney, adolescent front. Like in this clip, for instance, where he meets her parents:

You Remind Me of a Man...