My Dream Is Yours

MY DREAM IS YOURS - DVD Movie

This backstage showbiz saga was quickly put into production at Warners when Doris Day proved to be the breakout star of the moment in her first film, Romance on the High Seas. And although Doris has a basket of tuneful numbers and the movie itself boasts a crazy Bugs Bunny sequence, it has the look of something rushed into service. Doris spots the main chance when talent agent Jack Carson needs to replace his egotistical client, crooner Lee Bowman. Some conventionally enjoyable climbing-the-ladder scenes follow (which bear a resemblance to Doris Day's real-life struggles to catch on as a band singer, such as trouping while raising small child). Equally conventional, but less convincing, is a romantic contrivance to delay the inevitable Day-Carson pairing. The movie is awash in Technicolor, and director Michael Curtiz crams some wonderful vintage landmarks of Los Angeles into the picture: the Brown Derby restaurant, Schwab's Drugstore. The color also shows off Eve Arden's red hair, although her sardonic style requires no color enhancement. Martin Scorsese has acknowledged My Dream Is Yours as a key influence on his musical, New York, New York, and the unhappy romance and candy-colored photography give a hint why. And the Bugs Bunny thing is a live-action/cartoon blend (à la the Gene Kelly-Jerry the Mouse dance in Anchors Aweigh), directed by Friz Freleng, that puts Day and Carson in rabbit suits. That's the most inspired sequence, so be advised. --Robert Horton