Donald Gresham (William Holden) meets young perky Patty O'Neill (Maggie McNamara) atop the Empire State building. They agree to go out to dinner...but no sex. Then Donald's ex Cynthia (Dawn Addams) won't let him go and her father David Slater (David Niven) gedts involved. Then HE falls for Patty and makes the moves on her.Once considered very risqué (for using the words "virgin" and "seduce") this is now very tame PG rated material. That doesn't mean it's bad though. The script is great, the acting on target (McNamara was nominated for an Academy Award) and it moves quickly. The sexual ;poltics in it are dated but the film IS over 60 years old. Worth a look.

You'll never know who these people really are in this movie. They have no background. They just appear in the Empire State Building in order to get the story rolling. And roll it does. It's a very superficial, pretty inconsequential, and funny comedy. Who cares who the characters are or were, anyway? The thing most important is physical and sexual and all the jockeying that goes on before the relationship reaches that point. It turns out to be a comedy-writer's paradise. Of course in the end they will get married to at least throw a bone to social mores. Holden is near top form and Niven, as his older upstairs neighbor whose daughter was Holden's girlfriend, is classic.

This is one of my favorite old movies. Although William Holden is the leading man here this is one of those movies where one of the side characters is the most memorable. In this case it's David Niven. He's such a stuffed shirt that about as cavalier as he can manage to get is when he tells Peggy's character "I want to kiss you until your lips are somewhat bruised". He relates the story of the failure of his first marriage to a "southern gal" who was always baking pop overs and served them at every meal. After dinner she would always drawl "wasn't them popovers good?". He stood all he could of this airhead until one day when he hit her across the rear end with a hot popover pan. He said " it raised quite a welt, although I was not privileged to see it." When Peggy later says her feet hurt he says "never say your feet hurt. My foot hurts singular is acceptable but to say my feet hurt is a rather sordid admission." The fact that I am writing these lines from memory will tell you how much fun I had watching this movie over and over. William Holden was the king of the movies as far as I'm concerned and he was charming and at his best in this movie. He made more really good memorable movies than Clark Gable could have hoped for. This movie is not well known and as far as I'm able to find out is not available of DVD. I'm hoping is will be eventually because it's a nice funny little movie that shows New York in it's heyday.

"The Moon is Blue" was denied a Production Code seal and the refusal was upheld upon appeal to the board of the Motion Picture Association, primarily because the character played by Maggie McNamara announced that she was a Virgin and intended to remain one until she was married. The words virgin and seduction were used frequently in this film that was mainly a comedy about being occupied or pre-occupied with sex and,for those reasons it was denied approval, and it was released and shown minus approval. It wasn't the first film to be denied a Production Code seal, but it was the one that led to the ultimate demise of the power of the Hays Office, the Legion of Decency and various local blue-nose censor boards to determine what could not be said or done on screen.