Review of The Mating of Millie (1948) by Greg W — 31 Oct 2008

I absolutely adore this movie. It's pretty short, only about an hour and a half, but it is really sweet. It's about a sort of square, professional woman, Millie, who works in a department store.

She is friends with a little boy in her apartment complex named Tommy who is about 6 or 7. Tommy's father died in the war, so he only has his mother to look after him. One day Tommy's mother has an unfortunate accident (she dies) he is sent to an orphanage.

Millie and Tommy are like two peas in a pod and she desperately wants to adopt him as she adores him and she herself was raised in an orphanage and wants to save him from the experience. When she goes to adopt him, however, the director of the orphanage says that she can't adopt a child unless she's married so she leads him to believe that she has a fiance in Alaska in the hopes of stalling him in order to figure out what to do.

In the middle of this whole thing she meets a headstrong, writer (Glenn) who needs a job. Millie enables him to become a floor walker at the deparment store. He makes a deal with Millie that since she helped him get a job he will help her find a husband so she can adopt Tommy.

I absolutely cannot say enough good things about this movie. The chemistry amongst all of the actors is wonderful and Glenn Ford is really funny. The ending is dynamite! If I could only watch 10 movies for the rest of my life, this would be amongst those ten.

They've played it on the Turner Classic Movie Channel (which is where I saw it).