Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore is the repeated line that poor Simone Simon says because every time she turns around somebody else is using her apartment and lets themselves in with a key. The previous tenant William Terry was very generous with keys.

This film is a rather dated comedy because the housing shortage in the Washington, DC area during World War II was a temporary social phenomenon that few today might get. A more successful and long lasting film on this topic was The More The Merrier from a year earlier. But that one boasted major stars like Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur and an Academy Award winning Charles Coburn.

Like Jean Arthur in that film, Simone Simon is a girl from Quebec to explain her French accent who's come to work in one of the wartime agencies that sprung up overnight in the DC area. Why she didn't work in Canada is anybody's guess, but her original intention was to stay with her friend Dorothy Granger. But between the promise of a room and Simon's arrival Granger gets married to Grady Sutton. Personally I'd rather stay with Simon than Sutton, but that's the situation.

At this point the plot takes a lot out of Noel Coward's Designing Women which itself was pretty daring back in the day. In fact if this film was not a Monogram Picture I doubt it would have slipped by the censors. This film which was definitely not Code approved material would never have been made by one of the major studios.

She gets an apartment from William Terry who was leaving to join the Marines because of the impression she makes on Terry. But after that it's James Ellison and Chick Chandler and even the twin kids next door who have bathroom privileges. Simon ends up working by day and running her own hospitality suite for the Armed Services.

Robert Mitchum has a small supporting role as a Navy CPO who also gets a key expecting a little privacy for he and the wife. And two people who are really funny in this whole affair are Chester Clute and Minna Gombell. Minna is the best one in the film in fact she might have been who inspired Audra Lindley and Chester may well have inspired Norman Fell in playing the Ropers in Three's Company.

It all ends in a lovely fight that ends up before Judge Alan Dinehart who has to sort all the cast out in his courtroom. In fact Dinehart figures prominently in the very surprise ending the film has.

Because it came from Monogram Johnny Doesn't Live Any More got no attention from the censors and possibly the critics of the time. But it's a real comedy gem which is sparked by the ingenuous character that Simone Simon plays. Try to catch this one.