On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Film: On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Stars: Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Jack Smith, Leon Ames, Rosemary DeCamp, Mary Wickes, Ellen Corby, Billy Gray

Director: Roy del Ruth

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Doris Day: click here to learn more about Ms. Day (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

All of the women we'll profile this year bore the title of "America's Sweetheart" at some point during their career.  But few of them got bogged down with that title in quite the same way as Doris Day did in her career.  As we'll find in the coming weeks, Day was wildly successful as America's Sweetheart, holding that banner for nearly twenty years, and it was the primary foundation for most of her movies, to the point that by the end of her career, she'd practically become a punchline for being the "world's oldest virgin."  But a film like On Moonlight Bay shows exactly why she was so good at that.  Virtually all of the tropes we associate with being America's Sweetheart, Doris Day lived in her time as a leading lady, which by 1951 was starting even if she wasn't the proven box office phenomenon she would eventually become.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Marjorie Winfield (Day), whose father George (Ames) has moved his entire family to a more respectable & wealthier part of town to live in a nicer neighborhood.  Initially something of a tomboy, Marjorie falls for an idealistic young man named Bill (MacRae), in the process becoming far more traditionally feminine in hopes of pleasing him, though both of them don't feel that they think marriage is the correct path for them as a romantic couple.  As the film progresses, they fall deeper in love, even though her father doesn't want her to pursue such an untraditional young man, but after he goes off to war (and adjusts his views on marriage), he condones the union and they end up in each other's arms before the film finishes.

On Moonlight Bay is not a direct remake of Meet Me in St. Louis, but it is clearly borrowing from the film.  The movie is about Day, but it's really about her family-her kid brother Wesley (Gray) might honestly have more screen-time than she does if you get out a stopwatch, much in the same way that a lot of the other actors in Meet Me in St. Louis share the spotlight with Judy Garland.  There's even a Christmas scene to complete the comparison.  The issue here is that Meet Me in St. Louis is a sentimental masterpiece, with bright costumes, moody cinematography, & toe-tapping musical numbers, and On Moonlight Bay...isn't.  The film was a big hit, and even got a sequel out of the deal called By the Light of the Silvery Moon (with pretty much the entire cast returning, including Day & MacRae), but it's just too feather-light and the music doesn't have enough panache.

Day's part here is one that she'd know well.  One of the more psychological tropes of the America's Sweetheart genre is a woman who doesn't at first present to the norms of respectable femininity, but by the end of the movie the man in her life has convinced her that's what she needs to do to be happy.  This is true for everyone from June Allyson (Little Women) to Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady) to even modern examples like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.  This is something that Doris Day excelled at, starting this film as a tomboy in dirt & pigtails, and then transforming into a blonde goddess.  It's not hard to see the appeal to the male gaze on this one-the idea that beneath every girl is a ravishing movie queen, if only she'd listen to the man in her life.  I'm hopeful as we continue this month that we'll see Day step out of that shadow, as her pluck & talent deserve a movie that sees those first, before catering to her lesser co-leads.