Two for Tea is a standard musical from the early 1950s enhanced by Gene Nelson's dancing and Eve Arden's characteristic wisecracks. Doris Day and Gordon MacRae are obviously fine singers and work well together. But I prefer Day in the musical western Calamity Jane and in her mid-decade dramatic turns in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Ruth Etting biopic Love Me or Leave Me. MacRae always seemed wooden to me but that may have been what was required during the period. I haven't seen him in other roles which demanded more from him other than to stand up and sing. The dancing gives the film life as in the Charleston number. Nelson shines when the film becomes his in the Crazy Rhythm jungle sequence and the solo dance on the staircase. I wonder what might have happened if he had been under contract to MGM instead of Warner Bros. Would two Genes at MGM have been one Gene too many? Who can say now, but it's pleasurable to imagine Nelson in a film directed by Stanley Donen.

Tea for Two (David Butler, 1950) - I like Doris Day, but her cheery singing and cartoonish sensibility can't save this average musical, which is hamstrung by excessive comic relief, an unsuitable setting (the onset of the Great Depression - what an amusing scenario) and characters it's very difficult to root for. The set-up is this: Day dreams of being a Broadway star, and will get her big break if she can win a bet with uncle S.Z. Sakall to say "no" to every question she's asked for 36 hours. Not only do the writers fail to mine this promising premise to convincing dramatic ends, but they hardly wring any laughs out of it either. It's left instead for Billy "Oh no, not Billy De Wolfe" De Wolfe to provide the comic relief, which is not a situation I would like to revisit any time soon.The lack of thought that went into the script is epitomised by the staggeringly artless way a gaggle of fun late-'20s songs are crowbarred into the narrative. Still, the film is lit by that good score, much of it performed by frequent co-stars Day and Gordon McRae, and some impressive hoofing from Gene Nelson - with his staircase dance the obvious high spot. Terence Davies' favourite character actress, Eve Arden, snipes agreeably in support. Tea for Two is based on the stage musical No, No, Nanette (filmed in 1930 and 1940), which is the show-within-a-film here.

Doris Day was involved in many musicals at Warners from 1948 onwards, and 'Tea for Two' is a typical example. Set in the stock market crash of 1929, this variation on 'putting on a show' has Day as both an heiress and a stage-struck singer and dancer, supported by her friends Jimmy the composer (Gordon MacRae, later to appear to good effect in 'Oklahoma' and 'Carousel'), and Tommy the hoofer (Gene Nelson, the cut-price Fred Astaire who ended up directing Elvis' minor musicals).The score is nice but not that memorable - 'Tea for Two', 'No, No, Nanette', 'I Want To Be Happy', 'Do, Do, Do' - while the story, loosely based on the play No, No, Nanette concerns rivalries, lost investments, and a comic uncle (SZ Sakall, who played the same part in countless films throughout the 1940s and 1950s). Billy de Wolfe and Patrice Wymore round out the cast as a heel of a producer and his sniping leading lady.As a film, 'Tea for Two' passes the time and boasts some great costumes and colour, even if most of the film doesn't have a 1929 feel. And the bookending sequences, with Sakall telling a tale to a roomful of children, doesn't quite sit with the rest of the material. But it isn't bad.

This film peaks near its beginning with a production number featuring Doris Day and Gene Nelson dancing with both an infinity mirrored wall and the New York skyline showing outside (of some huge windows). The later production number, a blend of "No, No Nanette" and "Tea for Two", is tellingly anti-climatic.The plot is easy - Ms. Day has to say "No" to everything for a day. But, the movie goes on and on with several songs and dances having little/nothing to do with the story. Other characters and sub-plots are thrown in; with all the extra songs and dances, I have no trouble believing everything in this film was not in the original "No, No Nanette". Some of it all is very good - Day and MacRae sing well, Mr. Nelson dances well, and Eve Arden does her thing - but this feels more like a string of songs and scenes than a movie. ***** Tea for Two (9/1/50) David Butler ~ Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson, Eve Arden