Take Her, She's Mine (1963)
After reluctantly packing up his daughter, Mollie, and sending her away to study art at a Paris college, Frank Michaelson gives new meaning to the term "concerned parent." Reading Mollie's letters describing her counter-culture experiences and beatnik friends, Frank eventually grows so paranoid that he boards a plane to Paris to see firsthand the kind of lessons his daughter is learning with her new artist amour.
Watch Trailer
Cast
Similar titles
Reviews
Waste of time
One of my all time favorites.
A different way of telling a story
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Producer: Henry Koster. Copyright 3 November 1963 by 20th Century- Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Criterion and the Trans-Lux (and other theaters): 13 November 1963. U.S. release: November 1963. U.K. release: 26 January 1964. Sydney opening at the Regent. 8,789 feet. 89 minutes.SYNOPSIS: This is the story of the frustrations of a father, sending his "dish" of a daughter to college. The father, Frank Michaelson (James Stewart), is a respected lawyer and chairman of the School Board, who is called to account by Hector G. Ivor (John McGiver), vice chairman of the School Board, because of flamboyant publicity regarding Frank's strange behavior. Michaelson had been reported arrested for participating in a riotous sit-in strike over banned books, arrested with an alleged Chinese mistress in Paris and jumping into the River Seine in what appears to be the nude. A newspaper editorial demands he resign from the Board. It is Michaelson's explanation of these episodes that is the story of "Take Her, She's Mine".Michaelson and his wife Anne (Audrey Meadows) find their lives complicated by that fact that they are the parents of a "dish", Mollie (Sandra Dee) and a budding "dish", Liz (Charla Doherty). The father is bent on protecting Mollie at all costs, unaware that most of his fears result from an overly alive imagination.NOTES: Fox's top domestic money-spinner of 1963-64.The play opened on Broadway at the Biltmore on 21 December 1961, running for a most satisfactory 404 performances. George Abbott directed Art Carney, Elizabeth Ashley, Phyllis Thaxter and June Harding. The Ephrons, former staff writers at Fox, sold the screen rights of the play to their old studio for $350,000. The Ephrons themselves served as the basis for the play's parents, their daughter Nora was the model for Mollie, whilst the actual college was Wellesley. (Ephron of course was also a Fox producer. His credits: Carousel, The Best Things in Life Are Free, Desk Set, 23 Paces to Baker Street, Sing Boy Sing and A Certain Smile).COMMENT: I don't suppose any film genre dates so badly as a sex comedy. Today's taboos are tomorrow's ho-hums. But "Take Her" is impossible. Here's a movie that was archly old-hat even at the time it was made. Despite many attempts to be with it and titillatingly daring, the script persistently falls pathetically flat. Old-time pratfalls, weak puns that even Shakespeare would have rejected, gags that are painstakingly telegraphed five or ten minutes ahead, impossibly naive to the point of boneheaded and stupid characters — these are just some of the "Take Her" vices that make even the dullest of TV sitcoms look positively bright and breezy by comparison. All Nunnally Johnson seems to have done is to aggravate an already over-wordy stage play by adding lots more dull and downright tedious padding. Koster's heavy-handed direction worsens the situation no end. As does Stewart's mannered acting. Production values are extremely moderate, whilst even normally reliable credits like photography and sets are as dull and uninteresting as the script. Despite the movie's enormous popularity, I find it difficult to credit that even the most indulgent picture=goer would find much amusement here. "Take Her" is not just your ordinary ham-fisted farce, it's a complete and utter waste of time.
During a three year stretch, James Stewart made three comedies--three films that just didn't seem to suit his talents all that well. The problem with MR. HOBBES TAKES A VACATION, DEAR BRIGETTE and TAKE HER SHE'S MINE is that they all try too hard to be kooky. There is no subtlety about them and Stewart essentially plays the same befuddled role three different times. While none of these films are terrible, compared to his other wonderful films, they just seem to come up very short.TAKE HER SHE'S MINE begins with Stewart explaining to the local council about all the publicity he's recently received. So, in a long, long series of flashbacks, Stewart explains away potentially damaging news reports as just misunderstandings--all which incidentally occurred while he was following his daughter (Sandra Dee) at college because he was worried she would become a "loose woman". Again and again, he assumes she is much more of a libertine than she is, yet he ends up getting arrested on morals charges himself.While the idea of a worrying father having trouble letting go of his daughter is a clever idea, the execution and style leaves so much to be desired. Instead of great insight into a father's worries or simply making a clever film, too ofter the film degenerates towards kookiness and cheap laughs. In many ways, this movie looks and feels much more like a sitcom minus the annoying laugh-track.The bottom line is that Stewart was an amazing actor whose films are quite often brilliant and sublime. Sadly, not everything he made was gold and it's hard to imagine that just after making THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, he made these silly pieces of fluff. Watchable yet dopey.
Once again Stewart was the unlucky husband and father (this time an attorney) who must keep fun-loving, adventurous daughter Dee out of trouble In college, the intrepid miss gets herself into the Bohemian lifestyle When Stewart visits to check up on her, he ends up in trouble with the police himself, with the consequent embarrassment of unwanted publicity Having been dismissed from college, Dee flies to Paris, where her father tracks her again Dee has taken up with avant-garde painter Phillippe Forquet, who is as eccentric as he is handsome Stewart winds up in a bizarre-looking costume at a bohemian ball, falls into the Seine, and gets arrested by the French police Finally, a promise of relative stability is presaged when Dee and Forquet head to the altar Back home (and greatly relieved to be there), Stewart realizes that his middle-aged domesticity with Anne (Audrey Meadows) will be short-lived Their second daughter has reached an age to rival, and possibly surpass her older sister's tendency for unpredictable mischief-making Meadows was just the woman to complement Stewart's hi-jinks Morley and McGiver enriched the elements
An all around fun movie from a time when they didn't have to rely on foul language, sex, and violence for their plots. I had never seen Sandra Dee in anything other than her Gidget roles. Wish they made movies like that today - a comedy that was actually funny. :)