TAMMY AND THE BACHELOR (1957)

Teenager Tammy (Debbie Reynolds) and her moonshine-making grandfather (Walter Brennan) live on a houseboat in a backwoods swamp in Mississippi. Tammy's getting restless to experience life and Grandpa is indeed considering having her schooled somehow. One day, a small plane crashes nearby. Tammy and Grandpa pull the pilot, Peter Brent (Leslie Nielsen, pictured with Reynolds), out of the wreckage and nurse him back to health. Peter, probably ten years older than Tammy, is the handsome bachelor son of a wealthy family in Natchez where they live on a plantation called Brentwood. Tammy is quite taken with Peter, but eventually he leaves to go back to Brentwood. A few weeks later, Grandpa is arrested for his moonshine activities and he sends Tammy to Natchez to stay with Peter for a spell. She walks the entire way with her pet goat Nan, and arrives on the night of a swinging party. The family takes her in, assuming that Grandpa has passed away, and soon she has worked her charms on not only Peter but his father, his eccentric Aunt Renie, his best friend Ernie who tries to date her, and even Peter's high-class fiancée Barbara. The only one immune to Tammy is Peter's mother (Fay Wray), an uptight matriarch who is concerned that her presence will mar the upcoming Pilgrimage Week festivities. Slowly, it becomes clear that Peter himself is falling for Tammy, but can such a love overcome obstacles such as age and class?

I have vague memories of seeing a couple of episodes of the Tammy TV sitcom from the mid-60s, but had never seen any of the Tammy movies. I assumed that the title character was, like Gidget, a suburban teeny-bopper type. So I was surprised by her backwoods origin, and found her closer to being a Pollyanna type, as enacted by Hayley Mills in the 1960 Disney movie: perky, confident, and able to charm everyone she meets. Reynolds inhabits the role nicely, though at the age of 24, she never really looks or feels like a teenager. Nielsen, long before he became famous as a comic actor in Airplane!, was 30 and more or less looks it, so going just on visuals, their age gap isn't too bothersome. Still, I spent a good chunk of the movie assuming that Nielsen was going to be a father figure, not a boyfriend, so I had mixed feelings when the romantic feelings flared up late in the story. The movie is brightly colored and well shot, and even Brennan's rickety houseboat looks nice. Brennan is Brennan, predictable but reliable. Wray gets to shine a bit as the nasty mother who does finally soften at the end, in a fun scene in which Tammy captivates the Pilgrimage Week tourists by telling an impromptu story. Sidney Blackmer is fine as the father, as is Craig Hill as Ernie who never quite becomes as slimy as I think we're supposed to take him for. Best is Mildred Natwick as the flighty artist aunt who I wish had a bit more screen time. The film was not an immediate hit. It wasn't until Reynolds' recording of the title song became a hit that the film found an audience. In the movie, she sings the Oscar-nominated song about her love for Peter to herself in her bedroom in a moment that, for me, doesn't really fit. Still, a harmless and comfortable romantic comedy in which Reynolds shines and Nielsen gets to be a handsome leading man. [TCM]