Going blindly into Three Smart Girls, one thing became obvious early on: this was a plot I was familiar with. I had seen this story before when I was a child watching movies with my family. Basically, this was the same premise as The Parent Trap. It may be that in 1936, when Three Smart Girls hit theaters, this was an original concept, but in the years since, this plot has been recycled and revamped numerous times, including two direct sequels. But I don’t review films based on what came afterwards; that’s hardly the fault of the film itself. If anything, it may tarnish the legacy of the films that shamelessly cribbed off of it.
Three Smart Girls is not based on anything previously published but was an original concept purchased by Adele Comandini for Universal Pictures. It became a launching vehicle for Broadway actress Jeanne Dante, who had been starring on the stage in Call It a Day. Jeanne would take a small part as one of the school girls and would soon afterwards be offered bigger, more elaborate parts. Soon afterwards, Deanna Durbin was cast, too, a second choice for the pivotal role of Penny, after MGM refused to loan out Judy Garland. Nan Grey and Barbara Read rounded out the three girls.
The three girls are the daughters of Judson Craig (Charles Winninger) and Dorothy (Nella Walker), a divorced couple. Dorothy lives with her daughters, Joan (Nan Grey), Kay (Barbara Read), and Penelope “Penny” (Deanna Durbin) in Switzerland while Judson is living in New York City. Dorothy has never gotten over her husband leaving and, years later, is still pining for him, so when the girls learn that he is engaged to a socialite gold-digger, Donna Lyons (Binnie Barnes), she agrees to fund a trip for the girls to New York to foil the marriage.
When they arrive, a plan is decided upon whereupon they will hire someone to pose as an even wealthier man who will seduce Donna away from their father. But a mix-up causes them to assume a genuinely wealthy man, Lord Michael Stuart (Ray Milland), is the one they have hired. Stuart, confused at first but attracted to Kay, plays along, doing his part to separate Donna from Judson while also trying to win Kay over. Comedy ensues, and, like most comedies from this era, everything wraps up nicely in the end with the villainess and her equally gold-digging mother (Alice Brady) properly foiled.
Watching this film ninety years after it first released, it becomes obvious that this movie hasn’t aged particularly well. This is not just about the plot being recycled again and again over the years, either, though that does play a part in it. There is just no getting past the feeling that this is engineered entertainment. The best films make you forget you are watching something that a writer hashed out on a typewriter and a studio produced; you get lost in the characters and the emotions. Here, that never quite happens. The feeling that you are watching performers acting out a story never really goes away.
There are some odd choices made, too, when it comes to the structure of the film. Almost from the start, we get an overproduced song performed by Deanna Durbin. Deanna, at only 14 years old, had an amazing singing voice, and the producers wanted to showcase it, but it isn’t done naturally in the film; instead, it is inserted into the picture at awkward times and allowed to play out for far too long. She sings three musical numbers in the picture, and each time she is performing a full song, which pads the runtime and brings things to a screeching halt.
On top of that, the way the songs were produced and inserted calls attention to the truth that she is not singing them live. Many films from this era have done a better job of hiding this, but here it is obvious and distracting. The sound quality is off, and the lip-syncing isn’t quite perfect to sell the effect. Still, there is no denying that she had a beautiful singing voice, and audiences of the day fell in love with her partially because of it.
The three actresses are convincing as siblings. It’s in the way they play with each other, their teasing, and youthful banter sells this effect. These three feel like they have lived together all their lives and know each other well. Judy Garland was a talented actress in her own right, but the chemistry would have been all wrong had she been in the mix. This chemistry is evident from the opening scene when they are playing on a small sailboat and chasing each other outside their home in Switzerland. It’s difficult to perfectly capture this chemistry but all three girls nailed it perfectly.
Because this is a comedy and not a drama, this film is able to get away with many sins a serious film would not have been able to. For instance, Judson is portrayed as a man who really loves his daughters, yet he not only had no contact with them when he went off to New York and he can’t even seem to remember all of their names when he first sees them again. The film also expects us to believe that when the mother arrives in New York at the end, that these two will get back together again even though they divorced for some reason that we never learn about. In order to have that feel-good ending expected in a romantic comedy, we have to ignore details like that.
The love story that develops between Stuart and Kay is based on a mix-up that is right out of the pages of comedy writing 101. We’ve seen it dozens of times over the years, including in bigger, better films like The Gay Divorcé with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It’s a trope that is perfectly passable for a film like this but has been overdone, both before and since. The lack of originality weakens this film a little but Ray Milland and Barbara Read play off each other well enough.
And then there is the whole concept of the girls scheming to separate their father from a gold digger of a fiancée. The aforementioned The Parent Trap did a better job of playing this story out. The main problem here is that there is so little screen time available that there is just not enough time to make this plot anything more than a shallow contrivance. It’s perfectly fun to watch it play out, but there really isn’t any depth to it, and it is ultimately forgettable.
The best parts of the movie are watching Stuart trying to woo Kay while keeping from her that he is not the one she hired to seduce Donna. His attraction to Kay is fun to watch, though his machinations to get Donna out of the picture are a little too convenient. Since this is a comedy and we’re not meant to take any of it too seriously, it gets away with a lot. Still, it could have been stronger had a little more thought and effort been put into the plot and the relationships.
This is a fun little diversion of a film, though it ultimately feels like a lot of empty calories rather than a fulfilling experience. But sometimes that is exactly what you want: a light snack. The plot is charming, though a tad shallow, and the romance between Stuart and Kay is fun. There’s not much to this film overall, but at least it goes down easy.
Academy Award Nominations:
Outstanding Production: Joe Pasternak and Charles R. Roger
Best Writing - Original Story: Adele Comandini
Best Sound Recording: Homer G. Tasker
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Release Date: December 20, 1936
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Barbara Read, Nan Grey, Deanna Durbin, and Ray Milland
Directed by: Henry Koster
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