Nice effects though.

Best movie of this year hands down!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Barbara Stanwyck plays the title role of B.F.'s Daughter, a very wealthy heiress who marries iconoclastic liberal minded economics professor Van Heflin. B.F. is Charles Coburn and he's one of those people who's two initials everybody knows because he's that wealthy and powerful. Coburn is a firm believer in Herbert Hoover's rugged individualism and he's inculcated those values in his daughter. Stanwyck falls for a man who is the antithesis of her father's values, but he's barely getting by on his professor's salary. She decides to help by using her piece of her father's fortune to send him on a lecture tour for one of his books. Heflin turns out to be a natural, but he's never to know that his wife bought him a career.The novel was written by J.P. Marquand who is best known for those Mr. Moto mysteries. It was published at the beginning of World War II and MGM took several years to finally get it to the screen.Rich heiresses who overpopulated the cinema in the Thirties were a dying breed of movie heroines by the time B.F.'s Daughter came out in 1948. Stanwyck however makes it work and Coburn is in most familiar surroundings as the gruff millionaire.Van Heflin had teamed well with Stanwyck the year before in The Strange Loves Of Martha Ivers and he does well in somewhat lighter fair by comparison. Margaret Lindsay does well as Stanwyck's best friend who marries yuppie Richard Hart who goes to war. The term yuppie was not in use back then, but that is what Hart is. He proves to have the right stuff when that is questioned by Keenan Wynn.Wynn plays a part that seems a dress rehearsal for the role of the news commentator in The Great Man. A little less bitter, but just as cynical and he's got an incredible knack for predicting events wrong.B.F.'s Daughter is a great part for Stanwyck and a great film for her as well.

Viewers will recognize Charles Coburn from Gentlemen Prefer Blonds & Monkey Business. Here he plays Burton Fulton, successful businessman, father to Polly (Barbara Stanwyck). Co-stars Van Heflin, Keenan Wynn, and Spring Byington round out the familiar faces in "BF's Daughter". Polly falls for Tom Brett (Heflin) and they talk about "eating in speak-easys" and "the depression", but this was made in 1948, and it sure looks like 1948 throughout. This was written by John Marquand, who had also written some of the Mr. Moto books. The film feels a lot like the Magnificent Ambersons, which had come out six years before -- story of a rich family, and how the offspring deals with changing times. Very serious storyline... the only humor is the ongoing joke of repeatedly calling one of the locals by the wrong name. When Polly tries to help Tom with his career, things don't work out as she wanted. Stanwyck also made "Sorry Wrong Number" right after this in 1948 - THAT role got her nominated for an Oscar... but not THIS one. The script needs some spicing up, or something. Everything and everyone is technically competent, but there's something lacking.

John Marquand didn't deserve to have his novel turned into this film, which was probably a vehicle for its star, Barbara Stanwyck. Mr. Marquand was a writer whose books were popular and some of them endured the passing of time. It appears that MGM asked screen writer Luther Davis to transform the novel into something that the book was not. Under the direction of Robert Z. Leonard, one gets the impression this was a movie to show us how a woman in love can throw away all the comforts and perks of her wealthy life for a man that could not make a decent living to keep her in style.It doesn't make sense that Tom sweeps Polly off her feet by their first encounter in that "divine" little bistro in the Village, circa 1940s. Polly in furs and Tom in rags, give me a break! It would be laughable with today's audiences.Barbara Stanwyck and Van Hefiln, by the magic of the celluloid never age; if anything they get better looking. Ms. Stanwyck was a marvelous actress with the right material, but in here, she is bogged down by a the mediocrity of the writing. Ms. Stanwyck and Mr. Heflin worked together to better results in two other films. This film has to be viewed as curiosity piece that never made it big.Richard Hart was perfect as the stuffy Bob, the fiancee that is left behind when he can't cut the mustard. Charles Coburn also appeared in other films in which Barbara Stanwych shone, like "Lady Eve", and he is perfect as B.F. Fulton, Polly's father. He always played rich men. Margaret Lindsay has only a small part. Keenan Wynn is perfect as Marty Ainsley, Tom's friend.On one positive note, the decor of the homes we see in the film is just "divine", to imitate what Apples would say, as are the costumes and the glossy look they gave the film.

This film is based on a best-selling 1946 novel by John P. Marquand, which satirized a number of aspects of American society between 1932 and 1946, among them liberal and conservative views, the discrepancy between the wealthy and the ordinary folk, and lesser items like radio commentators who didn't know much but didn't let that stop them from sounding off, overbearing Pentagon brass, marriages made on the rebound and so on. However, you'll find precious little of the satire in this film version. MGM turned Marquand's novel into a "women's picture" that enforces what were considered in the late 40s to be the proper roles a man and woman should perform.The plot deals with Polly Fulton, the adventurous daughter of a wealthy industrialist, who decides she doesn't want to marry the stuffed shirt she's engaged to, though he's a decent enough chap. Instead, she will marry a man with ideas, someone a bit off the beaten paths she knows: an assistant professor of economics at Columbia University. (Live dangerously. Ha!) In this limited space, I can't detail much plot beyond indicating that the financial discrepancy between the wife and the husband lead to problems that bring them to the brink of divorce. One point the film is enforcing is that women should not emasculate their husbands by providing financial aid to them. "Hubby" should be the bread winner, even if the wife is wealthy.Before Polly's father dies, he asks her if she's happy in her marriage. She admits that she is not. Now B.F. tells her, "Marriage is an investment. It's like a business. Fight for your marriage." Polly's best friend tells her, "Lots of marriages aren't the way they say they are in books. But they are worth fighting for." So much for this film's philosophy. At the film's conclusion, when Polly's husband is about to leave her, she runs after him, shouting, "Oh, Tom. Don't go! I need you!" With that Tom enfolds her in his arms and says, "Oh, Polly, that's all I've been waiting to hear" and kisses her. Marriage saved. Does this sound like something you want to see today?In the novel, Tom had had an affair, and the marriage was not saved. But this film version is so gutless that it doesn't even allow Tom the affair. Instead, the woman Tom is rumored to be keeping turns out to be an escapee from a concentration camp for whom Tom is acting as a Good Samaritan.In addition, Tom takes back a good many things he'd said earlier in the film, telling Polly he was wrong about her wealthy father, wrong about Robert Tasmin, the Ivy-League educated lawyer Polly was about to marry, calling him "a real gentleman, after all." The movie simply affirms upper-middle-class values and, in fact, makes it clear that it's better to be wealthy, even if that might have some negative effects on a marriage at first. I mean, only animal-rights activists are going to forsake those full-length mink coats that Stanwyck sports here, and some of them might even prove weak when put to the test.The film has fine production values, though there is absolutely no sense of period detail. Everything is happening in 1948 fashions, and although the film covers fifteen years, no one ages a whit.Stanwyck and Van Heflin are clearly too old to play the young Polly and Tom, but, once the two are married, they immediately become 40-somethings for the rest of the film. Stanwyck, Van Heflin, and the rest of the cast all do competent acting jobs. It's just that the script is so weak. Utter piffle!