The Lady Is Willing Reviews

Bright, breezy romantic comedy with Dietrich playing an unaccustomed sympathetic role in which the audience didn't have to secretly like her. Dietrich is a renowned musical-stage star with no husband but a passion for motherhood. She finds an abandoned baby, James, and decides that she wants to raise it. But she has no idea what to do and never even bothers to check whether it's a boy or a girl until she has to. James begins to cry, so Dietrich, in a tizzy, makes her manager, Ridges, and her secretary, MacMahon, nuts until they locate MacMurray, a divorced pediatrician, who straightens things out. He's puzzled by Dietrich and also intrigued by her. He explains that the child is male and was only bawling because its stomach was empty. Dietrich names the baby after MacMurray and plans to adopt it officially, but that's thwarted when she learns that single parents aren't allowed to do that. In order to get to keep the child, she makes MacMurray an offer. He prefers research to practice, and she will marry him "in name only" and support his work. He accepts and moves into a section of her huge apartment as she blithely continues her career while raising her son. Do we have to tell you that the two fall in love? That causes a bit of woe when MacMurray's ex-wife, Judge, comes out of the woodwork. Dietrich resents Judge's interference in their lives and MacMurray's inability to deal with it, so she takes the baby and goes on tour. Then the baby gets sick and needs an operation. MacMurray flies in, does the surgery, he and Dietrich make up and, it is presumed, will live happily ever after.