In musical terms this is, in many ways, two separate films; in one we have Doris Day singing the kind of sunny, feel-good songs she was recording successfully at that time - the mid fifties - and in the second we have Sinatra singing songs for Adults - with one exception 'standards' - as only he can. The story itself is, of course, our old friend the catalyst or what happens when an outsider is obliged by circumstances to join, usually temporarily, an existing social fabric and test its tolerance. In some ways this is a remarkably accurate musical version of Fannie Hurst's old potboiler 'Four Daughters' which back in 1938 introduced John Garfield to Hollywood. Fresh from the Group Theatre and weaned on Clifford Odets' machine-gun vitriolic dialogue Garfield had much the same impact on Hollywood and moviegoers as his character did on the all-American family headed by Claude Rains. For the remake Warners dropped one of the daughters, switched the locale to New England and turned Sinatra loose on father Robert Keith, aunt Ethel Barrymore and sisters Doris Day, Elisabeth Fraser and Dorothy Malone. If you watch Four Daughters immediately before Young At Heart you will hear that much of the dialogue - especially that originally spoken by Garfield - has been retained. Okay, it's a meller through and through but all hands are on the top of their game and Sinatra has seldom sung better on screen. The fact that he doesn't appear for a good half hour merely adds to the feeling of two separate films because we've had that half hour to adjust to the 'homeliness' of the Tuttles and Doris Day has laid most of her 'cute' songs on us so that the whole effect is to lull us into cosy expectation of a 'nice' movie and then Sinatra explodes into the frame and hijacks the movie. This is one to see again and again.
Review of Young at Heart
