Her First Romance

A musical comedy starring Wilbur Evans and Edith Fellows, this work is based upon a Gene Stratton-Porter novel that is the fundament for Adele Comandini's typically sentimental and breezy screenplay, with the diminutive Fellows successfully advancing beyond her child star phase, attracting suitors as so many fireflies in a variation of the ugly duckling motif. Light opera standout Evans, a bass-baritone, and Fellows, a pleasing soprano, perform several works from classical and traditional repertoires, including several duets, and are as well a pleasing romantic pair, with the narrative concerning several intertwined relationships of the heart, with appropriate hindrances, all settled with good taste. The lovely Fellows, only 17 when this was filmed, fetchingly portrays a girl of the same age fulfilling duties as Cupid while gradually hoeing her own beaux, and there is competent support from a cast that includes Alan Ladd, Jacqueline Wells, and Judith Linden, with a particularly fine performance by the seldom-seen stage trained Marian Kerby as an Irish housekeeper/cook.