Goodbye, My Fancy is an interesting, if not completely satisfactory, film about a woman with a successful professional life but a habit of running out on challenging relationships and personal situations. It’s the story of Congresswoman Agatha Reed (Joan Crawford), who returns to her alma mater to receive an honorary degree. She accepts in part with hopes of reuniting with her college love, Jim Merrill (Robert Young), who is now the university president. Agatha is trailed for the weekend by Matt Cole (Frank Lovejoy), a Life magazine photographer who had a relationship with Aggie a few years previously and is still carrying a torch for her.
I expected the film to be a bit more of a lighthearted romantic comedy, given the premise, the college campus setting, and especially the fact that wisecracking Eve Arden is along for the ride, playing Aggie’s secretary. The campus is indeed filled with effervescent young women like Mary Nell Dodge (Virginia Gibson of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and Jim’s daughter Virginia (Janice Rule, in her first year in films), but on the whole the film is a fairly somber affair.
Crawford always attracts the audience’s attention, but her character is perpetually oh-so-serious, which becomes a bit tiresome. She’s melodramatically happy about things like seeing her dorm room for the first time in decades, but never seems to convey an authentic sense of joy. And frankly it’s hard to have a great deal of sympathy for a woman who’s jilted not just one but two men, or to understand why they both want her back so many years later. Is she really that fascinating? When Joan contemplates running off without giving her commencement speech, regardless of the disappointment of all the graduates, I didn’t feel much respect for her character.
As a side note, I’ve never understood why actresses like Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck prematurely aged themselves with such matronly hairstyles in the early ’50s. For that matter, Robert Young is very obviously wearing makeup to age him behind his actual early 40s; it’s interesting that a makeup job to age him as Shirley Temple‘s minister father in Adventure in Baltimore (1949) made him look distinguished, but here it’s been laid on with a trowel.
Unfortunately neither of the film’s leading men come off very well. Young’s character is a bit of a bore, and Lovejoy’s know-it-all cameraman is simply annoying. And there are unanswered questions, such as why did Matt (Lovejoy) wait six years to decide he couldn’t live without Aggie?
There are other questions, such as why was dingy Ellen Griswold (Lurene Tuttle), Aggie’s roommate back in the day, such a good friend then? And if they were good friends, why didn’t they keep in better touch?
Much of the film’s second half is occupied by Aggie and a self-satisfied physics professor (Morgan Farley) lecturing about “academic freedom” and the “right” of professors teaching any subject to inject politics into the classroom. This political indoctrination is given the more admirable label “teaching students to think,” and the board member (Howard St. John) who is concerned is portrayed as a blowhard buffoon. All of which caused me to contemplate that perhaps the more things change in Hollywood, the more they stay the same!
Goodbye, My Fancy was based on a play by Fay Kanin, originally performed on Broadway with Madeleine Carroll, Shirley Booth, Sam Wanamaker, Conrad Nagel, and Bethel Leslie in the roles played by Crawford, Arden, Lovejoy, Young, and Rule. Some of the movie scenes are quite theatrical in nature, with a good deal of “speechifying,” although the filmmakers tried to open it up a bit by filming several scenes outdoors.
I’d love to know where the exterior college scenes were filmed. An outdoor amphitheater seen near the end of the film might have been used early in Elopement (1951),
but I’ll need to see that one again to double-check. (Update: Mystery solved! The college in the opening scenes of the 1960 film Tall Story as identical, and the IMDb listing for that film led me to the confirmation that both Elopement and Goodbye, My Fancy were filmed at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.)
Watch for Ann Robinson (War of the Worlds) as the very dramatic Drama Club representative who welcomes Aggie to campus. The cast also includes Ellen Corby, John Qualen, and Viola Roache.
Goodbye, My Fancy was directed by Vincent Sherman. It runs 105 minutes.
Laura G. is a proofreader and homeschooling parent who is a lifelong film enthusiast. Laura’s thoughts on classic films, Disney, and other topics can be found at Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, established in 2005. Visit her website at http://www.laurasmiscmusings.blogspot.com.