YES, MY DARLING DAUGHTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 31, 26 January 1940, Page 34

YES, MY DARLING DAUGHTER

(Warners’) The release of this film right on top of its presentation by a touring company gives many New Zealanders an unusual opportunity for a close comparison between stage and screen methods of treating the same play. As I have not seen the stage show, I cannot give any pointers, apart from suspecting that the play is a good deal more "daring" (see advertisements),

than the film. I may be wrong, but the script certainly seems to contain possibilities which, because of the stricter screen censorship, could not be realised. When the darling daughter (Priscilla Lane), goes out to take her plunge in the waters of umconventionality, by spending an unchaperoned week-end with the young man of her choice (Jeffrey Lynn), she succeeds in getting not much more than her toes wet. The joke of the story is that the mother (Fay Bainter), who tells her darling daughter that she may hang her clothes on the gooseberry bush but not go near the water has in her younger days been a crusader for women’s rights and has been more than a little partial herself to illicit swimming. And the daughter knows it. Which weakens the maternal authority more than somewhat; especially as the daughter also knows that the bachelor poet (Roland Young), who happens to be spending a holiday with the family, used to be mother’s swimming partner. Grandmother May Robson knows all about it, too; but Granny has a welldeveloped sense of: humour, and, having had the same kind of trouble with her own daughter, can afford to enjoy the sensation of getting some of her own back. There’s a gossipy aunt (Genevieve Tobin), who is also in the know and very much in evidence. The only one who. cannot understand why the whole family is running circles round the gooseberry bush is the stodgy but well-mean-ing father (Ian Hunter). When he finds out he acts with vigour, but no tact. This is talkative. but pleasant. and- innocuous farce. Any daring in it lies in what might have happened, but didn’t. I notice that one critic has suggested that the story contains a social message: if’ so, it is underneath the gooseberry bush and well out of sight.