Goodbye, My Fancy is a 1951 Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 film starring Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....

, Robert Young

Robert Young (actor)

Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...

, and Frank Lovejoy

Frank Lovejoy

Frank Lovejoy was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He was born Frank Lovejoy Jr. in Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Jersey. His father, Frank Lovejoy Sr., was a furniture salesman from Maine...

 in a light tale about a woman and her old flame. The screenplay by Ivan Goff

Ivan Goff

Ivan Goff was an Australian screenwriter, best known for his collaborations with Ben Roberts including White Heat , The Man of a Thousand Faces and the pilot for Charlie's Angels .-Biography:...

 was based upon a 1948

1948 in literature

The year 1948 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel is renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction....

 play by Fay Kanin

Fay Kanin

Fay Kanin is an American screenwriter, playwright and producer. Kanin was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1979 to 1983.-Biography:...

. The film was directed by Vincent Sherman

Vincent Sherman

Vincent Sherman was an American director, and actor, who worked in Hollywood. His movies include Mr. Skeffington , Nora Prentiss , and The Young Philadelphians ....

 and produced by Henry Blanke

Henry Blanke

Henry Blanke was a German-born film producer who also worked as an assistant director, supervisor, writer, and production manager. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Nun's Story ....

. Goodbye, My Fancy was the third and last cinematic collaboration between Sherman and Crawford. The first two were Harriet Craig

Harriet Craig

Harriet Craig is a 1950 Columbia Pictures film starring Joan Crawford. The screenplay by Anne Froelick and James Gunn was based upon a 1925 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by George Kelly. The film was directed by Vincent Sherman and produced by William Dozier...

(1950) and The Damned Don't Cry!

The Damned Don't Cry!

The Damned Don't Cry! is a 1950 Warner Bros. drama film starring Joan Crawford, David Brian, and Steve Cochran tells of a woman's involvement with an organized crime boss and his subordinates. The screenplay by Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman was based on a story by Gertrude Walker. The plot...

(1950).

Plot and cast

U.S. Representative

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

 Agatha Reed (Crawford) returns to her alma mater

Alma mater

Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...

 to receive an honorary degree

Honorary degree

An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...

. Reed was expelled

Expulsion (academia)

Expulsion or exclusion refers to the permanent removal of a student from a school system or university for violating that institution's rules. Laws and procedures regarding expulsion vary between countries and states.-State sector:...

 from the school years earlier for participating in an all-night date with young professor, Dr. James Merrill (Young), now the university president. The romantic fires are rekindled when the two meet. Matt Cole (Lovejoy), a photographer who loves Reed, believes her feeling for Merrill is simply an unresolved hold-over from her girlhood and follows her to the school.

A subplot involves Reed embroiled in a university matter over progressive teaching methods with Dr. Pitt (Morgan Farley

Morgan Farley

Francis Morgan Farley was an American actor whose career began in 1918 in the play "Seventeen". Farley played a large number of mostly small parts in movies, television and broadway...

), trustee Claude Griswold (Howard St. John

Howard St. John

Howard St. John was a Chicago-born character actor who specialized in unsympathetic roles. His work spanned Broadway, film and television...

) and his wife Ellen Griswold (Lurene Tuttle

Lurene Tuttle

Lurene Tuttle was a character actress, who made transitions from vaudeville to radio, to films and television. Her most enduring impact was as one of network radio's most versatile actresses...

). After a series of misunderstandings, Reed realizes she belongs with Cole and should put away her romantic fancies of Merrill. Other players in the film include Eve Arden

Eve Arden

Eve Arden was an American actress. Her almost 60-year career crossed most media frontiers with supporting and leading roles, but she may be best-remembered for playing the sardonic but engaging title character, a high school teacher, on Our Miss Brooks, and as the Rydell High School principal in...

, Janice Rule

Janice Rule

-Early life and career:Born in Norwood, Ohio, her career included stage, screen and television work. Rule studied ballet and began dancing in Chicago nightclubs in her teens. She soon attracted attention in Hollywood and made her film debut in 1951...

, and Ellen Corby

Ellen Corby

Ellen Corby was an American actress. She is most widely remembered for the role of "Grandma Esther Walton" on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards...

.

Reception

Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

commented, "Performances are very slick, under Vincent Sherman's direction. Miss Crawford...sustains the romantic, middle-aged congresswoman with a light touch that is excellent," while Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 in the New York Times generally panned the film, writing, "Miss Crawford's errant congresswoman is as aloof and imposing as the capital dome.".

DVD release

Goodbye, My Fancy was released on Region 1 DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

on March 23, 2009 from the online Warner Bros. Archive Collection.