For every undiscovered treasure of Hollywood’s Golden Age, there’s an undiscovered piece of drek.  An example of the latter is this oddball bit of whimsy, a charmless post-war semi-musical set during the war.  Hick farmer John Payne goes off to the navy, enlisting despite his deferment, and leaving behind a waitress girlfriend (June Haver) and a kid sister (Connie Marshall).  After the news arrives that Payne is missing in action, young Marshall is possessed by the irrational notion that she will find him on an island.  So, she and Haver hook up with old man Clem Bevans and set off on his sailboat.  (Though no one ever says so, they appear to be going from Maine to Florida.)  This bizarre and unmagical film strains to be about “believing” and “a child’s faith,” and the result is lame-brained slop. 

Handsome Payne, miscast as a hick, is sorely missed for most of the picture (though he must have been glad about having little to do here).  Haver, so manufactured and artificial, actually had a whole career at Fox based on her usefulness as a threat to Betty Grable, the studio’s superstar, just in case Grable got out of line.  Both ladies were blonde singer-dancers, but who could confuse the easy and likable Grable with the robotic Haver?  (They starred together in the 1946 musical THE DOLLY SISTERS, memorable for the campy and outrageous items-in-your-makeup-bag production number.)  Haver makes Grable seem as dense and complicated as Barbara Stanwyck.  Yet, there was Haver in every Technicolor musical that wasn’t good enough for Grable, and considering how bad most of Grable’s musicals are, that really says something.  

Haver must be hiding hair and makeup people on that sailboat because she always looks flawless, even when the boat makes it to the swamps.  Connie Marshall is in Margaret O’Brien mode: moody, emotional, irritating.  The oft-repeated song is “Give Me the Simple Life,” sung in the credits, then sung by Payne, by Haver, and heard on a jukebox.  The picture’s most startling and inadvertently memorable element is its use of “We’re Off to See the Wizard.”  In a non-MGM movie, no less!  It is first heard as underscoring, leaving you to doubt what you are hearing, but it continues when an off-screen chorus sings the words.  Surprising, yes, not least for making absolutely no sense.  This is a garishly colorful Fox picture, struggling to turn itself into a sentimental favorite.  Marshall does get to “find” Payne, because he comes home and then has to go out and search for her and Haver!  By then, who cares?  Whimsy and magic cannot be spun from something this stupid.  It was based on a story by Robert Nathan, author PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, which became a sublime work of film fantasy (and one of the 40 movies profiled in my book SCREEN SAVERS).  Here, despite all that singing about “the simple life,” what we get is convoluted claptrap.