I don't understand why Myrna Loy did not have top billing in this. Hers was the lead character, the family matriarch. She was the veteran star that both young and old would have recognized, and family films are supposed to appeal to all ages. Had her fame fallen so much by 1952? Or was Jeanne Crain such a rising starlet at the time that Fox was determined to push her? What am I missing?
shareYou have it right on both counts. Loy's star was falling and Jeanne Crain's was on the ascendant. Jeanne usually played younger than she was, and by the time this film was released she was 27. In the prior years she had appeared in such films as State Fair, Margie and Pinky, for which she received a best actress nomination. Myrna Loy had been around since silent movies and indeed she had, had a role in the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, as a chorus girl, who remarks in her one line, as to how the film's star Al Jolson had no chance with the girl of his dreams.
As recently as 1947 and 1948 Loy had headlined films opposite Cary Grant. But after Cheaper By the Dozen (1950), over the next 10 years, she would be seen in only 3 films, this one, and two more where she received third billing. After that much of her work was on television.
Thanks, mdudnikov. I guess that show business has always been cruel and Loy understood that at the time.
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