'Dancing Bug Cuts a Rug'...or rather, 'How Did Cary Grant Get Roped Into This?' Theatrical producer, a "part-time genius" with three flops behind him, needs $100,000 to save his theater; he befriends an orphaned tyke with a bottle-cap hat, the boy's stone-cold chorine sister (who is roughly two times older than the kid), and the boy's caterpillar...who "dances" to "Yes Sir, That's My Baby". Elongated Aesop, although even Aesop provided a thoughtful moral. This one is just piffle, with the contrivance that the whole world would be chatting about such a miraculous event as a bug with an ear for music. This is the movie that launched a thousand worm jokes, and it's meant to be ironic that Grant (as the showman-turned-huckster) is the biggest worm of all. A box-office disaster in 1944, the film has not improved with age. Ted Donaldson is cute as the youngster, and Ann Loos has a funny scene playing Grant's put-upon secretary, but the insipid rest can easily be forgotten. * from ****
Review of Once Upon a Time
