Date with Judy, A

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Growing up as I did in the late 1940s and 1950s, I couldn't understand why my mother never wore a dress and a pearl necklace around the house every day and why my father didn't go to work in a suit and tie and why he didn't come home at noontime for a big family lunch and why we didn't live in a two-story house in a town like Springfield. That's what came of living with radio and TV sitcoms like "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" and "Father Knows Best."

I mention this because the MGM release "A Date with Judy" is one of the precursors of these spotlessly innocent shows. "A Date with Judy" started life as a radio program in 1941, moved to the big screen in 1948, and then went on to television in 1952. Although people have practically forgotten the radio and TV shows, we still have the motion picture to remind us of what the good ol' days probably were never really like.

The setting is Santa Barbara, a coastal city in Southern California. That is about the extent of the film's realism. The rest is pure fantasy, the teens in the film living in the same Hollywood dreamland in which David and Ricky Nelson grew up. There are no drugs here, no alcohol, no smoking, no profanity, and no sex in this ultra-sanitized make-believe world. The teens in love don't so much as hold hands, they're so chaste. If only.

The movie took the fictional characters from the radio show, used a few familiar movie actors to portray them, added a slew of musical numbers, and wrapped it all up in one of the most innocuous plots you'll find anywhere. The result is not so much annoying as it is bland. Fortunately, the music lifts the film above total mediocrity, and the scenes with Carmen Miranda have some degree of spark.

To be fair, though, there's much be said for the kind of wholesome family pictures Hollywood produced in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and "A Date with Judy" certainly beats most of today's ultraviolent, sex-and-drugs-laden TV shows and movies, at least for young people. One has to commend, for example, the Disney Channel for trying to maintain this squeaky clean if unbelievable image to this day.

Nevertheless, that probably won't make "A Date with Judy" any the more palatable for adults, who may find as its worst fault that it's vapid beyond hope. The plot involves teenager Judy without a date for the big dance when she happens to spot handsome Stephen Andrews, new in town and working at Pop Scully's drugstore and soda fountain. Ah, but it's not just Judy who has her eyes on Stephen but Judy's best friend, Carole, too, as well as most of the teenage girls in town. And that's about the size of the plot, which seems no more than a thirty-minute radio script padded out to almost two hours.

Jane Powell plays Judy Foster, and Ms. Powell is appropriately cute and spunky in the role, the quintessential girl-next-door. However, she belts out a song as if she's aiming for the upper balcony, and the director, Richard Thorpe ("Huckleberry Finn," "The Great Caruso," "The Student Prince," "Jailhouse Rock"), might have considered asking her to step it down a notch or two. Elizabeth Taylor plays Judy's best friend, Carole Pringle, a sexy, snobby, sophisticated rich girl, whose father owns just about everything in sight, including the local radio station.

Wallace Beery plays Judy's father, Melvin Foster, and Beery gets top billing, possibly because at the time of filming he was the oldest and most-recognizable name in the cast. Funny how times change. Now, most people probably wouldn't recognize Beery but know Powell and Taylor far more, as well as Robert Stack, who plays the new fellow in town, Stephen Andrews. Moreover, bandleader Xavier Cugat plays himself and Carmen Miranda plays Rosita Cochellas, the band's singer. Throw in a bevy of familiar character actors like Selena Royle as Mrs. Foster, Leon Ames as Mr. Pringle, Scotty Beckett as Oogie Pringle, George Cleveland as Gramps Foster, and Lloyd Corrigan as Pop Scully, and you have a pretty good roster of names to keep things afloat.

Mainly, however, you've got the songs to keep things going. Whenever it appears that the plot is heading nowhere, the producers throw in a song: "Love Is Where You Find It," "It's a Most Unusual Day," "Judaline," "I'm Strictly on the Corny Side," and many others. Not that the characters just stop everything, jump up, and start singing. The filmmakers include the songs as integral, if unnecessary, parts of the story line. For instance, Ms. Powell sings the opening number in a rehearsal for her school dance, the Cugat numbers occur during the entertainment at Cugat's nightclub, and so on.

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