The Very Thought of You (1944) [NR] **** (updated 24 June 2022)

The Very Thought of You is a heart-warming, World War II wartime romantic drama. It begins on the Aleutian island of Attu, just after the U.S. forces defeated the Japanese who had invaded the island. Sgt. Dave Stewart (Dennis Morgan) and his buddy Sgt. Fixit Gilman (Dane Clark) are given some well-earned Thanksgiving R&R and travel to Pasadena, CA, where Dave had studied structural engineering at Cal-Tech.

Before long, Dave meets Janet Wheeler (Eleanor Parker). Janet and her girlfriend Cora (Faye Emerson) work in a parachute manufacturing plant in Pasadena, but several years earlier she’d worked the night shift at a local drug store soda fountain where Dave, who’d worked the night shift while a Cal-Tech student, would come for refreshment. Janet had had a crush on him and, of course, he thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever met. After a whirlwind courtship, they marry in a civil ceremony, just before Dave ships out for the North African theater of operations.

This picture shows Janet Wheeler Stewart (Eleanor Parker) reading a letter from her husband Sgt. David Stewart (Dennis Morgan) sent from a hospital in North Africa where he is recuperating from a mortar wound. It's at the 1:32:00 mark of the film and she is saying "Until we're together again, all my love, all my life."

Parker and Morgan have excellent romantic chemistry and are believable as wartime sweethearts trying to capture a little romantic bliss in the midst of the anxiety of a world at war. This is definitely Eleanor Parker’s movie and she gives a captivating performance. It’s obvious that Dennis Morgan is following the men don’t display their emotions code of films of that period.

The film has an authentic, period feel to it, due in part to the depiction of Janet’s dysfunctional family. Her father (Henry Travers) and her teenage sister Ellie (Georgia Lee Settle) are totally supportive of her whirlwind romance with Dave, while her prim-and-proper mother (Beulah Bondi) and her sluttish sister Molly (Andrea King) are not. Molly, in fact, refuses to play the role of war widow and actively dates other men while her sailor husband Fred (William Prince) is at sea. Janet is, in contrast, optimistic and sweet-natured. She refuses to put up with her mother and sister, and ends up moving out and living with her girlfriend and co-worker Cora who had dated Dave’s friend Fixit. The film was shot in and around Pasadena, at Cal-Tech and at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

Eleanor Parker was born on June 26, 1922 and was 22 when she made The Very Thought of You. She had an illustrious career with 79 acting credits and three Academy Award nominations. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 91. Her best-remembered role is probably playing the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965).

Dennis Morgan was born in 1908 and was 36 when he made The Very Thought of You. He had 78 acting credits and passed away in 1994 at the age of 85.

One of the reasons I wanted to see this film was that I could imagine my parents seeing it in 1944 or 1945, while World War II was raging and I was two years old. It was a way to help me connect with them at that time in their lives, and also relate to their wartime experience.

Sadly, The Very Thought of You is not available on DVD. The only way to view it is on Turner Classic Movies or on one of the video streaming services such as Netflix. I did find the complete movie on a Russian video site, as of June 24, 2022. Here is the link.

Labels: drama, Eleanor Parker, romance, rom-drama-faves, WWII

Internet Movie Database 7.2/10 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=72) 

YouTube trailer 
Full movie streaming video (Russian video site)
Wikipedia The Very Thought of You (song)
Wikipedia The Very Thought of You (disambiguation = other uses)
Film review