TO EACH HIS OWN **

Given the novelettish material she had to work with Olivia de Havilland is remarkably good as 'Miss Norris', the middle-aged spinster who also happens to be mother to an illegitimate son, conceived during World War 1. He's played by the then newcomer John Lund, in his film debut, and he also plays his own father. This weepie was directed by Mitchell Leisen in 1946 and it was a huge hit. It's far from his best work but Leisen had a knack for taking sub-standard stories and giving them a depth they didn't deserve. He didn't quite achieve that here but there are times when this movie does have a ring of truth thanks mostly to de Havilland who won the Oscar for her performance.

Lund isn't at all bad either, showing a promise that was never really fulfilled while that fine British actor, Roland Culver, is also very good as an English Lord de Havilland meets during World War 11. The main problem is that it feels like a Victorian melodrama of the 'Dead, Dead and never called me Mother' variety. It is, in other words, very hard to take seriously as a wartime romance. Hard too, to believe it came from an original story by Charles Brackett and not from some door-stopper of a novel, (it crams a lot of plot into two hours). Still, as a weepie, it does the business and many people are very fond of it.