A Bedtime Story Reviews

Being a star and then retiring before one is four years of age is usually reserved for animal actors. Not so in the case of Ronald Leroy Overacker, better known as Baby LeRoy. Here was a child who began his career before he was six months old (and before there were laws about how long a child could be on the set), had a fabulous run in such films as IT'S A GIFT, TILLIE AND GUS, THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY and was already over the hill before he may have been properly toilet-trained. Chevalier, as a wealthy Vicomte, comes back to Paris after hunting game for about a year. Michael, his fiancee, has an appointment she cannot cancel so, with a night to kill, the debonair Maurice arranges three dates with three old amours, each more sensuous than the last. In the middle of his carefully planned evening, he finds a baby abandoned in his limo, left there by poor parents. Maurice is fascinated by the child. (This also happened in real life; LeRoy's folks were separated and Chevalier offered to take the baby.) He hires Twelvetrees as a nanny for the tyke, and cleans up his life for the sake of the child. When he takes the baby to a party at his fiancee's house, she is mortified and tosses the engagement ring back at him, thinking that this might cause him to realize that she is more important than this mysterious child. But Chevalier is thrilled to be rid of Gertrude, gives the ring to Helen, and the two of them presumably spend the rest of their lives together. It's cute, faintly amusing, and worth seeing if only for Baby LeRoy.