Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

SimonJack This move is filled with smiles and laughter. Doris Day didn't just make great social comedies with Rock Hudson. Before, after and in between "Pillow Talk" and "Send Me No Flowers," she romped through comedies with James Garner, Rod Taylor, Clark Gable, Cary Grant and others. She sang and danced in musicals with Frank Sinatra, Gordon MacRae, Howard Keel, Jimmy Durante, and Danny Thomas. And, the versatile Day showed she could act very well in dramas and suspense- thrillers with James Stewart, Rex Harrison, Louis Jordan, James Cagney and Kirk Douglas. "It Happened to Jane" is a wonderful comedy and light romance with two great comedy co-stars, Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs. Apparently, this was re-released two years later under another title, "Twinkle and Shine." Kovacs is the perfect cad – "the meanest man in the world." He is Harry Foster Malone, chairman of the E&P Railroad, who can't be bothered by small town Maine lobster dealer, Jane Osgood (Day). But, when her friend and small town attorney, George Denham (Jack Lemmon) helps her sue the E&P for damages because of its foul-up, Malone has met his match. When the controversy draws New York news media attention, Malone has to concede to save face. But, just as we think Jane has succeeded and gotten a fair deal, Malone pulls some more shenanigans to try to derail her. This happens a few times in the film. It all builds up to more entertainment and fun.This is a fun-filled film that the whole family should enjoy

mark.waltz It's Doris Day in Frank Capra territory where she goes up against the conglomerate that bought out the railroad that was shipping lobsters to her for her distribution company. A widow with young children, Day takes the head of the company (Ernie Kovacs) on with the help of small town lawyer Jack Lemmom and gets a fight that she refuses to back down from. Not one of her better known films, this is Doris in a rare dramatic part (with definite comic overtones) while Kovacs is a dark character completely unlikable. He's the type of silent movie villain that would kick the widow out into the snowy cold and not loose a night's sleep over it. Even in the sound era, he'd get silent era movie style hisses.Singing the title song over the credits and a ditty with a group of local kids, Doris does get best to make this lighter fare than it really is. Had this been cast with any other actress, it would not be as cutesy as it is, and that there within lies its weakness.Such familiar faces as Mary Wickes, Gene Rayburn, Gary Morton and Jayne Meadows appear in smaller parts, but this is a battle between down to earth Doris and cold, calculating Ernie as to who will steal the film. Jack Lemmom does his best in a rather wasted part that any handsome young actor could have played.

Holdjerhorses Ever wonder what made some on-screen actors (and behind-scenes talents) great? Why they lasted so long in show business? There's no better proof than the astounding IHTJ! The old axiom, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage," generally holds true. But IHTJ demonstrates conclusively and joyously what GREAT talents can do with an average script.In any hands other than these consummate pros, this script would be standard B-movie fare: stock characters, contrived situations, late-50s sit-com dialogue.The best line in the film is Jack Lemmon's – "Live!" – delivered to a lobster. Yes, a lobster. (To the writer's, Norman Katkov's, credit, it's been perfectly set-up and placed. But look what Lemmon DOES with it!) Go back and read the full credits with deep appreciation. Every scene has been beautifully lit, staged, shot, directed and edited.But in the end it's these incredible actors who turn this otherwise forgettable fluff into a genre masterpiece: funny, moving, tender, rousing film making! We think we "know" Doris Day's oeuvre because she made everything look so easy. In fact, singing, dancing, acting or all three, she was NEVER the same in any picture. She was a natural from her debut in "Romance on the High Seas." An incredibly disciplined, professional, ambitious "natural." Yes, she got handed her share of "perky" characters. But even THOSE performances are different from film to film. She handled drama with equal aplomb, in "Storm Warning," "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Midnight Lace," for instance.The same may be said for Jack Lemmon. Contrast "Days of Wine and Roses" with his other star turns, from "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment" to "Missing" and "Save the Tiger" and "Glengarry Glen Ross." Now, watch what Day and Lemmon (and Richard Quine, director) do with the most improbable and ostensibly silliest "reverse proposal of marriage" scene ever filmed, in IHTJ. On a moving train (no green screen), with Day in a spotless white dress crawling atop the coal car and Lemmon blackened and shoveling coal.Just watch in awe! Never a false note, never an ounce of overacting, every second totally believable and heartfelt until your own heart leaps for joy at the sheer improbability of the myriad combination of screen talents – on and off camera – that carry off this scene and this picture! (The dialogue? You've heard similar before, and since.) Ernie Kovacs, all but unrecognizable as "Malone," is pluperfect as the comedic villain who finds his heart before Fade Out. He would steal the picture . . . except he CAN'T, because everybody else delivers their lines with genius too! As an interesting exercise, contrast the terrific, spot-on, human-scaled FILM performances in IHTJ with those of the vaudevillian / Catskills comedians (wonderful though they were) overplaying to the balcony in Stanley Kramer's desperate, straining and ultimately off-putting sledgehammer, "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."Though IHTJ is considered a throwaway picture in retrospect, it's really testimony to what geniuses can do with a so-so script when they're under contract and dedicated to giving the audience their best.Plus Jack Lemmon drives a Studebaker convertible. Who could ask for anything more!

mrsastor This has to be the most underrated and overlooked of the comedies from Doris Day's later career. I'm surprised at the relatively low score it has received here on IMDb, as it's a really fun and entertaining movie (particularly following the unfortunate Tunnel of Love she appeared in the prior year).Rather than the lush, opulent interiors and wardrobe we usually look forward to in a Day comedy, this one is stunning for its exteriors. Filmed in New England in the summer of 1958, the film exudes idyllic small town splendor. Day plays Jane Osgood, a widowed entrepreneur (all "independent" women in 1950's TV or movies are either widows, as in Lucille Ball's later television work, or impossible-to-marry shrews like Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything). Osgood operates a budding lobster business, and when an expensive shipment is ruined by the laxity of the railroad, she takes on railroad magnet Harry Foster Malone in a highly publicized David & Goliath lawsuit. Ernie Kovacs is particularly memorable in his portrayal of Harry Foster Malone, an obvious and amusing allusion to Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane, which was of course an allusion to William Randolph Hurst. In her legal battle, Osgood enlists the aid of local attorney and old friend George Denham, the man she's "supposed" to be with and just doesn't realize it, played well by a young Jack Lemmon. Throughout the course of the story, the film seems to at regular intervals inject some rather insightful observations on a multitude of thought-provoking topics, including the place and nature of democracy in a capitalist society, the overwhelming power wielded by big business, even the (at the time) ever expanding place of television in our lives and its ability to influence and inform. And all of this in a comedy! The only negative I can think of is the inclusion of perhaps the worst musical number ever put on film. Jane Osgood is the den mother of the local boy-scout troop (naturally) and at the camp out in her back yard she leads them in a sing-a-long of the single most stupid, dreadful and endless song you ever heard in your life. "Be Prepared"…well they warned you! It starts out as amusingly bad, but then seems to last about fifteen or twenty minutes until you think you'd rather take your own life than hear one more note. Any self-respecting boy scout over the age of five would kick you right in the nuts if you asked him to sing this wretched torturous piece of nonsense.This aside (it is unfortunately not that uncommon in films of this era), this film benefits well from a strong, well written script and an excellent cast. It is actually much more intelligent and heart-warming than any of the Doris Day-Rock Hudson pairings, and while it is a very different kind of film, it can hold its own against any of those. Highly recommended, but be prepared to hit the "mute" button when those boy-scouts start singing!