TAKE HER, SHE'S MINE

US, 1963, 98 minutes, Colour.
James Stewart, Sandra Dee, Audrey Meadows, Robert Morley.
Directed by Henry Koster.

Mr Hobbes is the first of three films that James Stewart made with director Henry Koster in the early sixties. Stewart had worked with Koster in the fifties with the comedy Harvey and the adaptation of Nevil Shute's No Highway in the Sky. The other two films in this trilogy are Take Her, She's Mine and Dear Brigitte.

The first two films were written by prolific screen writer-producer Nunnally Johnson. Each of the three films is popular family Americana of the early sixties - humorous, sentimental, affluent, brash and slightly superficial. Mr Hobbs is the most entertaining of the three and teams Stewart with Maureen O’Hara?. Take Her, She's Mine is the slightest and involves Stewart in an examination of the popular behaviour patterns with young teenagers in the early sixties. In Dear Brigitte the family is younger and Bill Mumy, a popular television youngster who later grew into an actor in such films as Bless the Beasts and Children and Sunshine, involves a youngster infatuated with Brigitte Bardot to whom he writes and the film ends with a visit to the famous actress. This time Glynnis Johns is the wife.

1. How entertaining a domestic comedy? James Stewart, Sandra Dee, American families? Americans in Paris? Didactic because of families? A light probing of American values?

2. The genre of American domestic comedy, the presentation of the family, roles of parents and of children, the breaking of conventions? Domestic comedy and education, children growing up? American styles of language, comic situations?

3. The use of colour photography, Panavision, American locations, the contrast with France? The music? The humour?

4. How credible was the plot? A contrived plot to show the humorous side of families and growing up, the generation gap, the American-European? generation gap? Innocents abroad? Suitable for the purpose of this kind of comedy?

6. The focus on Mollie and the use of flashbacks to present her? The humour of Mollie's activities, their particularity in the sixties: Ban the Bomb etc., folk singers, the fashionable protests? (How dated does this seem now, how relevant?), her genuine falling in love after the various protests? How much ironic humour in the screenplay and the visual presentation of the various groups to which she belonged?

7. The contrast with Frank Michaelson and the irony of his being taken to task, his telling the story and the Education Board listening, their sympathy and their antipathy? (the humour of the head of the investigation?), the strategic placings of the flashbacks? What did Frank reveal about himself, his attitudes, change of attitudes, gradual involvement even in protests? The visit to France and all the mistakes? His Daniel Boone costume? His encounter with Henri's French parents and their similar prejudices? The presentation of Anne as the typical American wife, support of her husband?

8. The younger generation, Henri and the various friends of Mollie?

9. The various American characters, younger members of the family?