Film Fridays: I Love Melvin (1953)

Theatrical Film Poster, 1953

For Film Friday, I thought that I'll write about the movie that I've been dying to see. And that film is I Love Melvin starring Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor. Most of the musical numbers (maybe all) are on YouTube.

I Love Melvin is about a photographer named Melvin Hoover (O'Connor), who accidentally bumps into a young actress named Judy LeRoy (Reynolds) in the park. The pair starts talk and he later offers to do a photo spread on her; however, Melvin's boss has no intentions in using the photos. He plans on marrying Judy but her father wants her to marry someone else. She tells her that he could get her on the cover of Look Magazine, but for Melvin that was the impossible because only his boss gets the final say of who gets to appear on the front cover. One of the film's tagline introduces Donald and Debbie as "kids from Singin' In the Rain". Debbie plays a hopeful young actress who dreams of starting in a major motion picture named Judy; on the flip side, Donald is Melvin -- a struggling photographer who wishes to become a professional photographer and not, an assistant to a professional photographer.

The film begins with Debbie Reynolds picking up her red lipstick and writing the words: "I Love Melvin" in big red capital letters in text to indicate that Debbie had written on the mirror with her red lipstick. After the film's title credits ends, it cuts to a dance number. The first dance number of the entire film though Debbie barely dances in the film. "Lady Loves" is surely a good way to start a new film after the blockbuster that was Singin' In the Rain in 1952. The number has Debbie dressed up as a 1950s glamour girl but the wasn't the first idea and concept that they had in mind. At first, they wanted her to be a country girl but the idea was soon scraped when the glamour girl idea came into play.

Reynolds & O'Connor in Singin' In the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly

In Singin' In the Rain, Debbie faced multiple challenges including her feet bleeding through her shoes. The exact same thing happened to Ginger Rogers in 1936 with Swing Time after several pirouettes and takes of the "Never Gonna Dance" dance sequence.

Reynolds & O'Connor on set of I Love Melvin

The film moves from the street and to the park, which is where the new musical number takes places. "We Have Never Metas Yet" starts off with Debbie singing as she leaned onto a picnic basket. And she's day dreaming about meeting the perfect guy who is roughly six foot three. It then cuts to Donald walking towards a lamp post and swings around it like Gene Kelly during the "Singin' In the Rain" dance sequence in 1952's Singin' In the Rain, which is probably MGM's idea to have Donald recreate the lamp post swing move from the Gene's number, then Donald and Debbie sings a line at a time until the meet around the corner, bumping into each other there. The song finishes with the pair in a bad mood. They do, however, talk to each other in an off-screen conversation until the scene moves to the steps of a park gazebo.

After Debbie has left the screen, Donald talks to Debbie's little sister and she tells him that "life has its funny little ups and downs", which is a pretty universal advice that any little girl could give you even a fictional little girl. That's pretty weird for a grown man getting schooled by a little girl (Sorry, Donald!) but it's this scene that drove Donald into going on a date with Debbie's character and making an attempt to get her on the front cover of Look Magazine; however, it didn't happen until the end of the film, leaving it to the audience's imagination to figure out what happens next to Melvin and Judy. Theoretically, they continue to date until they end up getting married, but that's just me.

                                                                                                            - Sophie Leigh