Has Anybody Seen My Gal

This wonderful film has often been described as a wonderful piece of Americana and so it is.

It is beautifully realized thanks to a wonderful cast, terrific pacing and a story line that we can repeat over and over: money isn't everything.

Charles Coburn gives another wonderful performance. This versatile actor, who moved from drama to comedy with ease, is fantastic as the elderly gentleman who visits the family of the woman who turned him down years before when he proposed to her. While the woman herself is now deceased, Coburn finds her family in the ideal American town of the 1920s.

Lynn Bari is wonderful as the status seeking mother married to a soda store owner-Larry Gates. Then there is Gigi Perreau who is as precocious as ever.

A young and beautiful Piper Laurie appears as their elder daughter who becomes engaged to Rock Hudson, a soda jerk at Gates' store.

When Coburn goes to live with family, posing as a border, all hell breaks loose when he gives them anonymously $100,000. The money changes all of them drastically.

There are wonderfully comic turns everywhere and there is a short but memorable Charleston done by Laurie and Hudson. Even, Coburn figures in the dancing.

You will be upset when the movie ends because Coburn, on the verge of being found out, announces to the family that he may never see them again as he leaves. Nevertheless, this is a feel good movie; it conveys the American ideal and values so well and with great comedy along the way.