To modern audiences, the premise is innocent enough - a newly married man (Dennis O'Keefe) has to appear in court as a witness in an embezzlement case against the clerk who sold him a jeweled garter, and then ran off with the money. The garter in question was a present for O'Keefe's then-girlfriend, Gertie (Marie "The Body" McDonald), an exotic dancer who is about to be married to another man (Barry Sullivan). O'Keefe needs to retrieve the garter from McDonald before his new wife (Sheila Ryan) finds out. Also in the cast were Binnie Barnes and J. Carrol Naish.
Producer Edward Small and legendary director Allan Dwan had been successful with another film starring Dennis O'Keefe and Binnie Barnes, based on a Wilson Collison play, Up in Mabel's Room (1944). Obviously fond of Collison's work, Edward Small wanted to make Getting Gertie's Garter as early as May 1942. He petitioned the idea to the censors, who thought the title was too risqué and refused to approve it, making it unlikely that Small would be able to clinch the film rights to the play. Small finally signed the deal on March 28, 1945, but the censors hadn't budged. According to Small, "[The censors] had the same idea [as with Up in Mabel's Room] that we were going to make the wrong kind of picture. When they learned that we intended making a picture acceptable in every way from the standpoint of the [Production] code, they were willing to register the title."
Production began (without a title) in the late spring of 1945, using a script that had seen nine writers, although only director Dwan, Karen DeWolf, and Joe Bigelow received final screen credit. Finally, on June 22nd, Will H. Hays, head of the censor board, wrote a personal letter approving the use of Getting Gertie's Garter as a title, but warned the producers "that extreme care will be exercised in the advertising and exploitation in connection with the title and the picture."
For such a "risqué" title, Getting Gertie's Garter was a rather tame film, and when it was released on November 30, 1945, the critical reaction was decidedly mixed. Notoriously cranky New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that "Edward Small, to whom society owes nothing in the way of gratitude for his previous cinematic disinterments of Twin Beds [(1942)] and Up in Mabel's Room has again raided the cupboards in which old stage farces are filed away and has hauled down Getting Gertie's Garter, which he has given a dusting off." The film, wrote Crowther, was "no better (but may be worse) than you'd expect." The anonymous film critic for the Ottawa Citizen disagreed, calling Getting Gertie's Garter "a fast moving gay comedy which is guaranteed to keep you in stitches from beginning to end."
By Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/76173/Getting-Gertie-s-Garter/
http://www.allmovie.com/movie/v92897
The Internet Movie Database
Lombardi, Frederic Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios
"Reviews of Current Films", Ottawa Citizen 22 Feb 46
Roberts, Jerry The Great American Playwrights of the Screen: A Critical Guide to Film, TV, Video and DVD
