On Moonlight Bay (1951)

(On Cable TV, February 2021) My well-established fondness for musicals is not unshakeable, and it clearly reached its limits with On Moonlight Bay. To be fair, this is a film that plays on chords that don’t particularly matter to me: As an affectionate look at 1910s small-town America, it played far better to older American 1950s audiences who could recognize themselves in there. (It’s worth mentioning that the film scrupulously avoids any realistic portrayal of the misery of life in the 1910s — this is a musical comedy, after all, and nothing is as important as the romantic fantasy it showcases.)  It also features Doris Day in one of her squeaky-cleanest roles as a young debutante faced with two romantic prospects: not the Day persona I like best, as she was far more interesting in satirical non-musical comic roles. But those are not the movies that On Moonlight Bay tries to be: This, based on a series of short stories, was meant to lull audiences into nostalgia enlivened by a few standard songs and familiar romantic choices. It’s not much and it feels even less interesting now than it must have been back then. The comedy is not that comic, the songs are not that striking and it’s a Technicolor Warner Brothers production— if anyone is looking at why MGM was such a powerhouse musical-making machine in the 1950s, you can do worse than studying the difference between their 1951 musicals and this one. On Moonlight Bay is far duller than I expected, although it earns a defensible place on any Doris Day filmography as an example of her early roles.