Ginger Rogers is best remembered for her musicals with Fred Astaire. After making eight films with Astaire, Rogers was getting tired of being just his musical partner, so she began making non-musical films.
A Story of Misunderstandings
On Christmas Eve, Polly Parrish (Rogers) gets laid off from her job selling toy ducks in a New York department store because she was only hired for the holidays. During her lunch break on her last day, she sees a baby being left on the doorstep of a foundling home. Afraid that the infant will roll down the steps, she picks him up, just as an employee opens the door. Despite Polly’s insistence to the contrary, the workers assume that the baby is hers and urge her to keep him. She manages to leave him there and escape.
When Parrish gets back to the store, she learns from her employer’s playboy son, David Merlin (Niven), that she’s gotten her job back and been given a raise because the orphanage has claimed she’s a mother and needs the job. The baby was left at her apartment, so she drops him off at the Merlin mansion on her way to a dance contest with a persistent clerk, Freddie Miller (Frank Albertson). When she gets home that night, an angry Merlin is waiting for her.
A Life-Changing Coincidence
This film takes a lighthearted approach to the topic of child abandonment and unwed motherhood, but the playful script is a clever presentation of important truths. Everyone who encounters Parrish’s dilemma with the baby assumes that she is an unwed mother who considers herself incapable of raising her child alone.Both the foundling home workers and Merlin are horrified at the prospect that the young mother doesn’t want to care for her own baby, having been offered the financial means to do so. Compared to solutions for unwanted pregnancies, which are far too common today, her desire to leave the baby with a foundling home seems very caring.
Although Parrish has absolutely no connection or responsibility to the baby, she eventually realizes that the benefits of this unexpected situation may outweigh the inconveniences of sleepless nights and assumptions about her morality.
It starts because of a desire for job security, but the baby’s presence in Parrish’s life soon grows much more important. Parrish doesn’t have any family back home or any friends in New York. She’s alone, with few life goals. The chance responsibility gives her the family, stability, and purpose she desperately needs.
Dancing in the New Year
This isn’t generally considered a holiday movie, but it does take place during the winter holiday season. It begins on Christmas Eve, when the heroine learns that she won’t be employed after the holiday. It’s also on Christmas Eve when she discovers the baby. One of the most important scenes takes place on New Year’s Eve, when Merlin invites her out at the last minute. As they ring in 1939 together in Times Square, they feel the first sparks of romance.
Although “Bachelor Mother” is not a musical, it offers Rogers one opportunity to show off her hoofing. At the Christmas Eve dance contest, we see her and Miller doing the Big Apple, a popular 1930s dance, at the Pink Slipper. Their moves are very impressive, reminding us of Rogers’ dancing skills, besides the multi-faceted acting talent, which she displays in this role.
