Bachelor Mother

Although Rogers had starred in four hit films sans Fred Astaire during the mid-1930s, it was really with BACHELOR MOTHER, her first solo effort after the team's separation and RKO's biggest hit of 1939, that she really confirmed that she didn't need to sing or dance to appeal to mass audiences. Notable as an example of the slight relaxation during the late 1930s of Hollywood's self-enforced Production Code, the slightly risque story features Rogers as a single saleswoman for a large Macy's-like department store who finds a baby on her doorstep, whereupon everyone assumes that she's its mother.

Many of the witty lines apparently went right over the heads of the ...