The only Warner Bros. production of its year to be based on a Broadway play, Yes, My Darling Daughter had a daring plotline for its day. Priscilla Lane plays a young woman who is determined to have an un-chaperoned weekend with her fiancé (Lynn). Although her mother (Fay Bainter) is an outspoken feminist, she disapproves of the arrangement and agrees to it only after her daughter learns that, in her youth, she had a similar romantic rendezvous. Even though the lovebirds' weekend turns out to be a chaste affair, their return is greeted with an uproar.
Although perfectly innocent and directed by William Keighley with a light comic touch, Yes, My Darling Daughter created an uproar of its own when the New York State Board of Censors threatened to ban the film because they found some scenes "suggestive." After the situation had generated considerable free publicity, production executive Hal B. Wallis made several judicious cuts that finally appeased the censors. The controversy only fueled public interest in the movie and turned it into such a box-office winner that it opened simultaneously in two Broadway cinemas a rarity at the time.
Producer: Alfred De Liagre Jr.
Director: William Keighley
Screenplay: Casey Robinson, from play by Mark Reed
Art Direction: Carl Jules Weyl
Cinematography: Charles Rosher
Costume Design: Howard Shoup
Editing: Ralph Dawson
Original Music: Heinz Roemheld, Harry Warren
Cast: Priscilla Lane (Ellen Murray), Jeffrey Lynn (Douglas Hall), Roland Young (Titus Jaywood), Fay Bainter (Ann Murray), May Robson (Granny Whitman), Genevieve Tobin (Connie Nevins), Ian Hunter (Lewis Murray).
BW-87m.
by Roger Fristoe
