Pretty Baby: Fashion and Film

Twice a year, for Valentine's Day and Sweetest Day, my church has a dinner and a movie date night. It always features a black and white film and lots of yummy food. Now, I'm not usually a girl who gets into b&w films. Usually, I give up after just a few minutes, but who ever picks out the movies for our date nights always does a great job. This year we watched the hilarious Pretty Baby (1950) starring Dennis Morgan and Betsy Drake.


A lowly worker at a marketing company, Patsy Douglas (Drake) dreams of writing her own slogans and her hunky boss, Sam Morley (Morgan). One evening, she adopts a doll from a demolished baby display at work. The display was to impress Cyrus Baxter, a grouchy baby food giant, but had failed. Patsy wraps the doll up and uses it to get a seat on the subway as she'd seen a man give up his seat on the subway to a lady with a baby only that morning. On the way home, she explains to her neighbor that she named her "baby" Cyrus Baxter Douglas, after the baby food giant. Mr. Baxter, through his own series of mishaps, happens to be on the subway and over hears the conversation. Touched, he sets out to improve her station in life and give his advertising contract to Patsy's marketing company. But baby Cyrus is, after all, a doll. What ensues is a comic series of events that attempts to keep Mr. Baxter in the dark until the all important advertising contract is signed.

Besides being terribly funny, there are tons of hats in this film, particularly in the subway scenes. It's not in color, but that means you get to use your imagination.

The wardrobe has some jewels too. Patsy has lovely work wear and even gets to wear a nice evening dress, which I picture to be pink. I wasn't able to find a picture of it though.

Check out these darling promotion posters. See the second one from the bottom on the left? There's a peak of the elusive pink dress.

Anyways, I adored this film. It's full of great clean humor. Usually, I'm the only one in the room laugh at vintage humor, but this film had the whole room roaring through out. This is one I really have to track down somewhere.