WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

SimonJack "On Moonlight Bay" is another home run comedy musical for Warner Brothers with stars Doris Day and Gordon MacRae. In just three years, Day had proved herself a box office draw with her singing and acting. This film opens with Doris as tomboy Marjorie Winfield getting into a baseball game with boys in her new neighborhood. In her first time at bat, she clobbers a triple, and then steals home on the pitcher. Doris Day always had a certain tomboyish-character about her. I think it was part of her screen persona that gave an image of a healthy, robust, energetic and attractive female. I don't know if Doris was the actual batter and slider in this film, or if she had a stand-in stunt person. My guess is that Doris did the duty. Later in the film, she fires three straight pitches that knock the bottles off a carnival stand. She also co-starred in another film with baseball – "The Winning Team" the next year. It was a fictionalized biography of the great Grover Cleveland Alexander, one of the best pitchers in baseball history. Ronald Reagan played Alexander in that film. In this film, Marjorie soon comes of age and moves into young womanhood when she meets the boy next door, William Sherman, played by MacRae. The film has a wonderful cast all around. Leon Ames is perfect as the father, George Winfield. Longtime comic supporting actress Mary Wickes is Stella, the Winfield's cook and house keeper. Billy Gray is great in the role of Wesley, and the rest of the cast fill out nicely. I suspect that Warner's was banking on the success of this film because its ending is an open-end for a sequel – which did come two years later in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon." Day and MacRae are unbeatable as a singing team – the perfect range of voices that complement one another beautifully. We are treated to some great old tunes. Young brother Wesley is the cause of many of the funny situations. And the script has nice funny lines peppered throughout. One of my favorite is when Marjorie is taking dance lessons on the sly while William is away finishing college. Prof. Barson, the dance instructor (played by Sig Arno) wants to teach her the Viennese Waltz, but Marjorie says that she wants to learn the Turkey Trot, so that she can do all the modern dances with William. Prof. Barson says, "Such dances they play now. The Grizzly Bear! The Bunny Hug! The Kangaroo Dip! Am I a dance teacher or an animal trainer?" For all of her talent, Doris Day quit making movies after just two decades as a star. She was 44 when here second husband, Martin Melcher died in 1968. She quit Hollywood, but soon found that her husband- manager had lost most of her fortune through bad investments. She won a lawsuit that restored $22 million from one person who had defrauded Melcher. But, she honored a contract Melcher had made for a TV show. She did the Doris Day show for five years. During her two decades in Hollywood, Day starred with some of the biggest male stars of the 1950s and 1960s. She received one Academy Award nomination, for "Pillow Talk" in 1959. But she was in films that garnered many nominations and that won a few Oscars for other actors, directors, songwriters and technicians. And, Day could act – well beyond her major fields of music and comedy. She was excellent in two thrillers, "The Man Who Knew Too Much" with James Stewart in 1956; and "Midnight Lace," in 1960 with Rex Harrison. Doris was up for Golden Globe awards a dozen times. She won three as the world film favorite female actress – in 1958, 1960 and 1963. This film, and any musical comedy with Doris Day in it, is a sure bet for an evening of family fun and entertainment.

donniefriedman I was hoping for more music, but I very much enjoyed On Moonlight Bay. Doris Day and Gordon Macrae are great together. The young Billy Grey, who plays the younger brother, has wonderful comedic ability. And all the minor parts are performed with love and care - Aunt Martha for instance. I particularly loved the parlour scenes with young ladies and gentlemen being forced to dance with each other, as well as an authentic glimpse as to how young people entertained themselves in those days,-- with the piano, with the gramophone, in a canoe, at a community dance. Every scene was conceived with great care. When the entire graduating class goes off to fight in WW1, the scene is done with a cheerful patriotism, but one can't help feeling the presence of a dark future looming over this Rockwellian town.

moonspinner55 As filtered through the scrubbed-clean, sexless mores of the 1950s, Booth Tarkington's "Penrod Stories" proved to be able ground for Warner Bros. in concocting sort of a low-brow variation on "Meet Me in St. Louis", with Doris Day as the small-town Indiana gal finding love with the boy next door (actually, across the street) while her ornery sibling (Billy Gray) causes chaos in the neighborhood. The Americana flavor (circa 1917) is laid-on with a thick coat of glossy color, while Doris twinkles and shines on cue. Warners had an immediate box-office attraction in Day, but too often cast her in bucolic settings (she seemed so much livelier in dressed-up musical comedies). Here, she cements her "wholesome as apple pie" image with smudges of dirt on her face and her hair in pigtails. It doesn't quite wash that leading man Gordon MacRae initially thinks she's a boy, though their sweetheart romance still manages to convey a bit of plastic magic. Followed in 1953 with "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", which was more of the same. **1/2 from ****

James Hitchcock The decade which gave us the First World War seems an unlikely subject for nostalgia. On Moonlight Bay, however, is a film which approaches the 1910s in a sentimental, nostalgic way, trying to persuade us that, whatever was happening on the battlefields of Europe, it was a time of a kinder, gentler America. The film centres upon the Winfield family, prosperous citizens of an unnamed mid-western town, and especially on the romance between their daughter Marjorie and her boyfriend William Sherman.William is something of a radical, with advanced views about politics and the institution of marriage, but as he is the sort of well-scrubbed middle-class radical who always wears an impeccably-tied bow-tie and calls his girlfriend's father `sir', we know that in the end he will turn out to be a thoroughly respectable young man, eager to do the right thing by Marjorie and his patriotic duty to his country. (The fact that he has the same name as a famous general is perhaps a giveaway). The film deals with America's involvement in World War One in the traditional flagwaving manner; it was made at a time when the Cold War had recently become a hot war in Korea, so there is an obvious political subtext.Set against this romance is a series of sub-plots involving Marjorie's mischievous younger brother Wesley, a sort of American Just William. Wesley is very well played by a young actor named Billy Gray, and his antics provide the film with its most amusing moments.The film is a musical, and the songs are pleasant enough, although the tunes are not particularly memorable and the lyrics are clichéd in the best `Moon-in-June' style. The film as a whole, although it has nothing of any depth to say and even the political themes are dealt with rather superficially, makes agreeable entertainment, especially on a wet Sunday afternoon (which is when I saw it on TV). 6/10.