CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

bkoganbing Hollywood did not even wait for the Broadway run to end with The Voice Of The Turtle. It would not be until 1948 that the John Van Druten play finished its run of 1557 performances, one of the biggest runs of the decade. On Broadway the roles played by Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Parker, and Eve Arden were done by Elliott Nigent, Margaret Sullavan, and Audrey Christie.And it's only a three character play so Warner Brothers got Van Druten himself and others to pad out the film. It also takes place in the apartment that's shared by Parker and Arden.We haven't seen support for the troops like this since World War II and unlikely to see it again in the foreseeable future. Apparently it was perfectly all right to take soldiers on leave into your home, a country that was founded on no quartering of troops in civilian dwellings just didn't press the point.In fact Arden is having the time of her life boosting our Armed Forces morale. Reagan whom she's gone out with before rings her up as he's on leave. Arden has traded up from an army sergeant to a navy commander in Wayne Morris. What to do with Reagan? She palms him off on her friend Parker who is an aspiring actress to entertain Reagan.It was a great break for both as the bulk of the film is the getting to know you and then love you dialog between the two of them. Reagan and Parker pair well together and Arden is her sharp and witty self. Eve's best scene is taking delight at the bad reviews a fellow actress got in a part that Arden was up for.The Voice Of The Turtle is a product of its era. It's still entertaining, but it has more value today as a picture of an America long left behind.

bmacv With snow falling softly over a back-lot Manhattan, and a French boîte where a Benedictine bottle holds the shade for a table lamp, how can anybody resist The Voice of the Turtle (Irving Rapper's adaptation of the John Van Druten stage hit, reissued as One for the Book)? It's a bit of romantic fluff set on the home front during the Second World War that somehow survives into the new millennium with much of its artifice and most of its charm intact.Circumstances throw together struggling young actress Eleanor Parker, on the rebound, and furloughed serviceman Ronald Reagan, who has just been daintily dumped by Eve Arden. Since hotel rooms are hard to come by on rainy nights in wartime, Reagan ends up spending the night on a studio bed in Parker's apartment. And the inevitable happens – they fall in love.That's just about all there is to it, allowing for some excursions into the New York theater world. But the cast, none of whom was on Hollywood's A-list at the time, gives it their best. This was the sort of amiable, easy-going role that Reagan played best, from the movies to the White House. Parker (in a dreadful hairdo) seems a little tense in the ditzy part of an ingenue with a slight obsessive-compulsive disorder, but ultimately she wins us over. Best of all is Arden, for once not a vinegar virgin but a high-fashion woman-about-town who's possessive about the multiple men in her life only when she's about to lose them. All told, The Voice of the Turtle is a somewhat faded sachet that brings back nostalgic memories of a 1940s Manhattan that probably never existed – but makes it fun to daydream that maybe once it did.

mdonath A hopelessly outdated plot, a stupid title, and Ronald Reagan are not in the recipe book for a good movie. However, Elanor Parker gives such a neurotically endearing performance that this movie transcends its flaws. Parker looks like Donna Reed, but her quirky performance gives her character a Diane Keaton oddball quality that is quite charming. Reagan is better than usual and Eva Arden gives her standard supporting role.

Neil Doyle Eleanor Parker was approaching the peak of her career when she was cast as Sally Middleton, the slightly daffy heroine of this charming wartime romantic comedy. Ronald Reagan, fresh from his stint in the service, returned to play a soldier who finds himself falling for the charming actress and staying overnight (innocently) in her apartment. Eve Arden is on hand for comic relief as the heroine's best friend and gets some hearty laughs with her usual witty observations and Wayne Morris has a secondary role as her Naval commander boyfriend. Kent Smith is wasted as a producer unwilling to make a relationship commitment with Parker. Eleanor Parker carries most of the film and proves adept at the physical comedy--notably in a scene where she prepares a sofabed for her Army soldier, empties ashtrays and primps pillows--all in harmony with Max Steiner's jaunty background score.One of Reagan's better post-war films with his usual amiable performance as the decent soldier--and far and away one of Miss Parker's most fetching roles.