The Major and the Minor - 1942 - Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland

This film is a DOOZY. The first time I saw it, I watched it without really knowing the plot so it just knocked me for six. It comes off as such an innocuous idea, but then Billy Wilder, genius that he is, keeps turning the screw and your eyes keep popping and yep - before too long you find yourself desperately longing that this fully grown woman masquerading as a twelve year old will somehow be able to prevent the Army Major she has fallen in love with from marrying his fiance - without things getting Icky.

http://www.listal.com/viewimage/170643h

Mr Kitty really had to cut this one down - I just kept raving on and on about it and in the end he had to throw my cup of tea in my face.
Not really.
Wacky stuff that didn't make the cut - Rita Johnson, who plays his nasty fiance Pamela - was a reasonably successful actress - never much more than the wife or the fiance (although she did star with Ray Milland in 'The Big Clock' of 1948 - quite a famous film noir) - but she made plenty of films none the less. Her career was cut short abruptly in 1948 when, of all things, a hairdryer fell on her head.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette

I mean, think about it - those things would have been pretty heavy. I wouldn't want to be hit over the head with one. It's sort of asking to be the murder method in a ' Murder She Wrote' episode. Was that one of the plots? I'm going to have to Google that. Didn't come up with anything except for a terrible website about how people have accidentally killed their pets. Don't Google that.

Back to Rita. She didn't die - but she was never the same. She had memory issues and pain issues and then apparently she took to the bottle. She died in 1965.

Another very famous person in this film that I did not get to talk about is Norma Varden. She plays Mrs Osbourne in the film (Robert Benchley's wife) - it's hard to imagine Norma Varden ever been younger than middle aged but there you go. She is the socialite who is almost strangled by Robert Walker in Hitchcock's 'Strangers on a Train', Lady Fetherington in 'Doctor Dolittle', on countless television specials AND Frau Schmidt from ' The Sound of Music'. Although it is a brief scene - she and Benchley work very nicely together. That scene in general is pretty awesome - with its entire school of Veronica Lake wannabees and the priceless line 'We use 'em for women'.

What did you think of this film?