SYNOPSIS: Swedish maid runs for Congress.
NOTES: Loretta Young won Hollywood's most prestigious 1947 award for Best Actress, defeating Joan Crawford (Possessed), Susan Hayward (Smash-Up), Dorothy McGuire (Gentleman's Agreement) and the inside favorite, Rosalind Russell (Mourning Becomes Electra).
Charles Bickford was nominated for Supporting Actor, losing to Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street.
COMMENT: It has been suggested that the remarkable popularity of this film was largely due to the scarcity of comedies in 1947. True, there were not comedies in abundance - if you exclude a respectable number of musical comedies - but the film's appeal probably lay as much with the homespun theme (Swedish girl wins over Washington) and its relevance to America's vociferous immigrant population as anything else.
Certainly if ever an actress did not deserve to win an award for a particular performance, that actress was Loretta Young as the farmer's daughter. Caricaturing a Swedish accent and acting the wide-eyed innocent with all stops out, Loretta gives the worst display of ripe old hamming in her entire career.
Fortunately, the support cast is much more agreeable. Bickford (by no means one of my favorites - I usually found his acting too heavy) is delightfully smooth and Ethel Barrymore (as usual) steals the show from one of the most solid line-ups of character players ever assembled in a moderate "A" feature. In fact for star power - past, present and future - it would be difficult to beat.
NOTES: Loretta Young won Hollywood's most prestigious 1947 award for Best Actress, defeating Joan Crawford (Possessed), Susan Hayward (Smash-Up), Dorothy McGuire (Gentleman's Agreement) and the inside favorite, Rosalind Russell (Mourning Becomes Electra).
Charles Bickford was nominated for Supporting Actor, losing to Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street.
COMMENT: It has been suggested that the remarkable popularity of this film was largely due to the scarcity of comedies in 1947. True, there were not comedies in abundance - if you exclude a respectable number of musical comedies - but the film's appeal probably lay as much with the homespun theme (Swedish girl wins over Washington) and its relevance to America's vociferous immigrant population as anything else.
Certainly if ever an actress did not deserve to win an award for a particular performance, that actress was Loretta Young as the farmer's daughter. Caricaturing a Swedish accent and acting the wide-eyed innocent with all stops out, Loretta gives the worst display of ripe old hamming in her entire career.
Fortunately, the support cast is much more agreeable. Bickford (by no means one of my favorites - I usually found his acting too heavy) is delightfully smooth and Ethel Barrymore (as usual) steals the show from one of the most solid line-ups of character players ever assembled in a moderate "A" feature. In fact for star power - past, present and future - it would be difficult to beat.