Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

A charming comedy which unfortunately has not been released on video or DVD. Both Gail Russell and Diana Lynn give lovely performances. It is a shame Gail did so few comedies as she had a wonderful style for it. The sequel was not as good and that is a shame because it could have rivaled the Henry Aldrich series. The sequence with the "geezer" and the sequence where they are stuck on top of Notre Dame at night are hilarious. the last scene with Beulah Bondi on the ship sailing back home from Europe has a wonderful kicker for the end of the film. Paramount should release this on DVD. it is a lost treasure.

Wonderful film from the autobiographical novel by Cornelia Otis Skinner, and all the more hilarious because those crazy things happened to the real Cornelia. Gail Russell and Diana Lynn are perfect as the real-life friends Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. A habit-forming film about a sweeter, more innocent age when two young girls were allowed to spend a summer in Europe, more or less unchaperoned.

Cornelia (Gail Russell) and Emily (Diana Lynn) decide to go on a trip to Europe as Cornelia discovers that Avery (James Brown) is travelling there. On the ship, Cornelia meets Avery while Lynn meets Tom (Bill Edwards) and the four become travelling partners. They disembark in England and visit France before making their way back home.

There is no plot in this story. It's a sequence of incidents that take you from the beginning to the end. The acting is pretty wooden in parts, especially from Brown, Edwards and Russell. The acting honours go to Charles Ruggles (Otis Skinner), Dorothy Gish (Mrs Skinner) and Lynn. Brown is a typically brainless, lug-headed American and Edwards is even worse! The film alternates between funny moments and drawn out scenes.

They really don't make movies like this one anymore. Which is a shame as it has such charm and wit. And there isn't a bad scene in the film.

Both Gail Russell and Diana Lynn are wonderful as the innocent girls abroad who end up in all manner of often awkward and funny situations. As has been stated before this was a true story. Which makes it all the funnier that everything you see actually happened.

I only came across this movie by chance as I had been reading about the short tragic life of Gail Russell after seeing one her other movies "Night Has A Thousand Eyes." She shows far more talent than she ever gave herself credit for, even if she had never really wanted to be an actress.

This movie is well worth seeing.

It's important to note, going into this movie, that it's set in the 1920s. "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay" is based on a book of the same title by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. It's about their teenage adventures aboard ship and on a trip to Europe. But the book wasn't written until 1942, and the movie made in 1944. That was smack dab in the years of heaviest fighting during World War II. So, one wonders what audiences thought at the time. Here they were seeing scenes of gaiety and fun from around Europe - staged at the Paramount studios along with older film clips from Europe. But they were probably seeing newsreel films the same day of the war and devastation in Europe.

Well, that aside, this is a very good comedy travelogue of two young ladies who have mishap after mishap in their adventures. Their antics and miscues resemble the comedy scenes of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

The film is good and fared okay at the box office. But considering its best selling status as a book, Paramount might have expected it to do much better than below 50th with a box office of $6 million. There were many war-related films ahead of it that year, but also a number of fine dramas, crime and mystery films, and several comedy romances and musicals.

Gail Russell plays Cornelia Skinner, but already in just her fourth film and at age 20, she was drinking to steady her nerves. By the late 1940s, she was an alcoholic and she made only 10 films after that. She died of liver failure from acute chronic alcoholism in 1961. She was just 36 years old.

Here are a couple of the better lines from the film.

Mrs. Lamberton, played by Alma Kruger, "I never forget things." Miss Horn, played by Beulah Bondi, "How to you know, Ethel? People who forget things don't remember."

Hotel Clerk (Marek Windheim, uncredited), "We never worry about American girls. They know how to take care of themselves." Tom Newhall, "Not these girls." Avery Moore, "You said it."