Never a Dull Moment (1950 film)
- Fred MacMurray: Chris Hayward
- William Demarest: Mr. Mears
- Natalie Wood: Nancy Hayward
- Gigi Perreau: Tina Hayward
Never a Dull Moment is an American comedy film from 1950 with Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray.
Action
The well-known composer and songwriter Kay Kingsley falls head over heels in Cowboy Chris Hayword and both get married on impulse. Kay leaves her glamorous life in New York City behind and follow Chris on his ranch Cougar Rock in Wyoming. There, Kay learns the two small daughters Nancy and Tina know, the first not inclined to accept her stepmother. Once there, Kay is involved in the long-festering dispute over water rights with the neighbors Mears. It takes months to Kay can cope with the requirements of a farmer's wife to some extent. Finally, misunderstandings lead to a temporary rift between the couple and Kay goes back disappointed to New York. But Chris and the kids convince Kay that her true place in Wyoming had.
Background
The career of Irene Dunne declined from the mid- 1940s gradually coming to an end. After two successful appearances as patents mother of a large family in Life with Father of the Year in 1947 and I Remember Mama, who had come into the rental in 1948, it became increasingly harder to come by for the actress appropriate commitment. The producer Harriet Parsons, daughter of the well-known society columnist Louella Parsons and responsible for I Remember Mama, Dunne finally offered the female lead in Never a Dull moment. Irene Dunne, who was at the time already 52, accepted, well out of the feeling to finally be able to play a glamorous role again.
The sometimes hair-raising adventures of - preferably female - city dwellers who have to cope in the country suddenly has always been a popular film subject. So the cowboy was in 1938 Merle Oberon as a spoiled daughter of a good family after closed out of an impulse marriage to Gary Cooper in My husband, suddenly among ranchers and cattle drivers again. Jean Arthur is out of love for John Wayne in A Lady Takes A Chance 1942 voluntarily to the farm of her husband. The basic idea of the urban dweller in the country emerged several decades later on the hit television series Green Acres back on, pulls in the Eddie Albert as a successful investment banker from New York into the wilderness and there with his anything but enthusiastic Hungarian wife, played by Eva Gabor, a new life begins. Never a Dull Moment is oriented with its initial situation closely to the film version of The Egg and I, The New Yorker, presented in 1947 Claudette Colbert as a rich, which follows her husband Fred MacMurray at his chicken farm in the Midwest and has to fight there with the circumstances. The screenplay is based on the autobiographical narrative stained Who Could Ask for Anything More? basis from 1943, in which the successful composer and songwriter Kay Swift talked about the experiences as the wife of a rodeo rider in Wyoming.
For Irene Dunne, it was the second collaboration with Fred MacMurray, with whom she had already filmed the 1939 comedy Invitation to Happiness. The two daughters of MacMurray are played by child star Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau. While Wood made the leap into the adult subject, the career of Perreau then soon gave out.
Theatrical Release
The film played at the end of a 1,475,000 U.S. dollars.
Reviews
Most critics pointed out the irony between the claim of the title and the actually perceived as old-fashioned and not very original screenplay and the excessive predictability of most jokes.
The New York Times even said that most comical situations are actually meant as funny as the stepping on a rusty nail.