Peter Casey has been with the New York City police department for 25 years. He's totally surprised when he's asked to retire on his 25th anniversary with the force. He's even more unprepared for the romance that develops between his favorite daughter, Maureen, and the Scottish cop who takes over his beat.
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Another one of those "pleasant diversion" movies – enjoyable while you're watching but you'll soon forget it. It has a top drawer cast with Thomas Mitchell, Priscilla Lane, Dennis Morgan and Alan Hale. Mitchell is a 25-year veteran of the police department who is unexpectedly and to his chagrin, forced into retirement upon reaching the 25-year mark. Mitchell has three daughters one of who, Lane, falls for Mitchell's replacement in the police force, a Scotsman played by Morgan. Mitchell dislikes Scots and has an ongoing feud with Morgan. The best parts of the movie were the early interaction between Mitchell and his daughters and Alan Hale's portrayal of a big blustering Irishman. The worse part was Mitchell forcing a street vendor to give him free fruit – something that visibly and quite rightly annoyed the vendor. It was also odd, given Mitchell's seemingly positive relationship with his daughters to see how depressed he became upon being told that one of the daughters just had a daughter and not a son. The whole business of his unreasonable and mean spirited rejection of Lane for her sin of marrying a Scotsman and his later quick turnaround was expected but not that believable.
This is simply a wonderful film made during the glory days of Hollywood which sadly are LONG GONE. One of the last interviews with Bette Davis said it all...you had to be a leading actor to be a "star" in Hollywood.. but by the 50's anyone that was in a film now carried that title. There are no BIG STARS in this film, but you will recognize Alan Hale who always makes me laugh. This movie with such fine actors/actresses Lane,Morgan,Mitchell show their craft and skills in every scene the way that films were intended to be made. It's just a delightful movie that gives you 90 minutes of fun and clever dialog. Just enjoy it.
I really enjoyed this movie, and laughed aloud several times. The father was for the most part lovable, in spite of his stubbornness and temper, and the 3 daughters were lovely, as was the Scottish policeman! I just couldn't understand the father's prejudice against the Scotsman as a suitor of his daughter: I mean, he had a good job, was kind and helpful, and steady. I guess it can only be explained by his stubbornness and the belief that the Scotsman in some way was responsible for his forced retirement. But this attitude seemed to be carried to a too harsh extreme when he disowned his daughter after she married the Scot, although he came round in the end.There were a couple of bothersome things for me: I found both of the policemen helping themselves to the Italian vendor's fruit without paying to be out-of-character. I really couldn't believe that the upright Scotsman would basically steal like that. And the general disappointment and grandfather's anger when the grandchild was announced to be a girl was again a bit hard to take in this day and age.But the election scenes were a real hoot, especially when the father is trying to dissuade people from voting for him! And Alan Hale Sr. is as always extremely watchable.
This is a cute and watchable little film from MGM. Considering that it had none of the huge stars like many of its films, it is surprisingly fun and worth seeing--and I almost scored this a 7. Dennis Morgan, Thomas Mitchell and Priscilla Lane are the stars and while I wasn't surprised to hear Mitchell's excellent Irish accent, I was surprised that Morgan did the Scotish accent as well as he did.The story itself is an interesting slice of life about retiring cop Mitchell. He didn't know he was about to lose his job and initially this throws him for a loop, as he loves his job--it is his life. And, he also blames Morgan for this because this young cop actually gets Mitchell's job! What happens next is something I'll leave up to you--I'd hate to spoil the movie. But, the big characters and the whole mood of the film is infectious--just turn off your brain and enjoy!