Slightly Dangerous (1943)

          Lana Turner works in the soda fountain at a department store. She is fed up with it. Robert Young is the new general manager of the store and when he calls her to his office, she gets angry and quits. What she says leads Young to think she is going to commit suicide and he tries to restrain her, but she rushes out. He takes flowers to her room, but the police are there, reading what sounds like a suicide note, but isn't. She goes to a beauty salon and gets a "new personality" treatment, emerging glamorous. As she goes into the Morning Star newspaper office, a painter drops a bucket of paint on her, knocking her out. She awakes in the office of publisher Eugene Pallette. She becomes hysterical because her new dress has been ruined, and when they ask her name, since she has determined to change her identity, she feigns amnesia. In the meantime, Young is having guilty nightmares because of her.
          Young sees the picture in the newspaper has run trying to identify her. Pallette conjectures that she may have had amnesia for a long time - may even be a missing heiress. Turner goes to the library to try to find a missing child that might fit her case. She comes up with Carol Burden, a two-year-old who was abandoned as lost after a long search. The name Baba was a term of endearment the family had used, and she pretends that name has come back to her. They research the name and identify Walter Brennan, who has put up with lot of phoney claimants as his daughter, says he will prosecute if she is bogus. Dame May Whitty was "Baba," the nurse of the child, and she has devised a test to determine the legitimacy of her claim. She has to pick her special toy out of a room full of toys. She manages to pick the right one and is immediately embraced by Brennan and Whitty.
          There follows a whirlwind of activities as Brennan introduces her to society. In a hilarious scene at the opera, Young is trying to get her attention and hangs dangling from the balcony. Then he approaches Turner in the lobby and is punched once again by Bond. However, she touches a rubber plant and he takes a piece of the base with him to get fingerprints from it. Brennan gives a society party for Turner, and Young crashes it as a waiter. He is punched again by Bond, but this time he has a tray under his coat. Young tries to claim that Turner is his wife, and produces a forged marriage certificate. The fingerprints match. She agrees to go with Young. She decides to play it up mushy and be an affectionate wife to make him back out of it.
          When they stop to get something to eat, she disables the car. She is coming on strong, and he is getting nervous. (Our old buddy, Mantan Moreland has a bit part as a waiter - hilarious as always.) And, she is starting to like him. The car won't start, and they have to spend the night - with all the predictable complications as Young desperately tries to stall and she is enjoying his discomfiture. He finally admits that they are not married, and tells her she is the most wonderful girl she has ever known. Back at the house, Brennan has learned who she really is, and then Young calls, telling him where they are. He sleeps on a lounge chair on the patio. When she awakes he tells her he has called her father. Then she starts to cry real tears because she is never going to see him and tells him she is crazy about him - and that she really is the department store employee he thought she was. When Whitty and Brennan arrive, they each try to take the blame. She confesses to Brennan that she is the department store girl - but Young suddenly denies that she is, and Brennan also refuses to believe it. Whitty takes her into the bathroom and tells her that she knows who she is, and that Brennan does, also. But it doesn't matter to him, because it would kill him to give up Turner.




Pallette


Whitty