My Blue Heaven

My Blue Heaven which starred Dan Dailey and Betty Grable are a happy show business couple who started in vaudeville and now are going into that happy new medium television. This was one of the first films that dealt with the phenomenon of television. As Dailey says during the course of the film, right now only Milton Berle and Howdy Doody are in it, the field is wide open.

Dailey and Grable are a happy couple, but they'd even be happier with a child, in fact Betty loses a baby almost at the beginning of the film. Friends and sponsors, David Wayne and Jane Wyatt suggest adopting because three of their six are adopted. The rest of the film is a lighter treatment of the themes from A Penny Serenade. Things go a lot happier for Dailey and Grable than they did for Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.

Because they are a musical performing couple Grable and Dailey get a whole lot of numbers and there's even a few tossed in for Mitzi Gaynor who was doing her second film. What a pity she came along as late as she did, she would have been a Grade A star in the Thirties. Gaynor plays an eager young understudy who'd just as soon Grable stay out on maternity leave.

Other than the title song, there's nothing terribly memorable in the score that Harold Arlen and Ralph Blane wrote for My Blue Heaven. Of course very few songs are as memorable. Until Bing Crosby introduced White Christmas in Holiday Inn, My Blue Heaven was the largest selling song in history with Gene Austin's version topping the charts.

My Blue Heaven is a pleasant enough diversion. Grable and Dailey work well as a team together, you'll enjoy them.