Bachelor Mother

Although Ginger Rogers and David Niven are top-billed in this contrived but hugely enjoyable comedy, the real star is that cuddly curmudgeon Charles Coburn. As the department store tycoon who threatens to dismiss Rogers from the toy counter after she finds an abandoned baby, he times every disapproving look to perfection before melting like the big softy he was. June Wilkins and Frank Albertson also do well as the inevitably jilted other halves. Felix Jackson's story earned an Oscar nomination, but it's Norman Krasna's script that merits the praise, along with the slick direction of Garson Kanin. It was originally made in Hungary in 1935, and remade in 1956 with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher as Bundle of Joy.