Pretty Baby

Patsy Douglas can't get a seat on the subway until she takes home the doll her ad agency is using for the Baxter Baby Food account. Then everyone makes way for the young "mother," including a mean old frozen-face named Cyrus Baxter who melts when he learns the little one is named for him. Patsy gets a promotion at the agency, the attentions of two handsome ad men and a rosy future - as long as Cyrus never learns there's a reason her bundle of joy is such a quiet baby! Betsy Drake and Miracle on 34th Street Academy AwardÒ winner* Edmund Gwenn are Patsy and Cyrus and Dennis Morgan and Zachary Scott are the smitten ad execs in a comedy that celebrates love, marriage and motherhood. Just not in that order.

Best known to posterity as the third wife of Cary Grant, Betsy Drake enjoyed a substantial film career during the postwar era. In PRETTY BABY, Drake plays Patsy Douglas, an enterprising young lady who always assures herself a seat on the subway by carrying a doll wrapped in baby bunting. Through a series of complications that could only happen in a movie, it is eventually assumed that the "baby" is genuine. Patsy's bosses, advertising executives Sam Morley (Dennis Morgan) and Barry Holmes (Zachary Scott), hope to use Patsy's bundle of joy to land an important client, grouchy baby-food tycoon Cyrus Baxter (Edmund Gwenn). Most of the film is a not-so-subtle swipe at radio and TV advertising, considered a rich source of humor back in 1950. Cast in a tiny role as a receptionist is future "June Cleaver" Barbara Billingsley.