One of Doris Day's best vehicles, a rags-to-riches biopic based on the life of Gus Kahn, one of Tin Pan Alley's most popular songwriters. Kahn's played here by the likeable Danny Thomas, in one of his several attempts at movie stardom - he eventually found fame on American television. Day plays his wife, vying with Patrice Wymore (who sings a song later very much associated with Day, Love Me or Leave Me) for Thomas's charms, and granite-faced Frank Lovejoy portrays Kahn's partner-in-song Walter Donaldson. Michael Curtiz, always seriously undervalued as a director of musicals, despite credits such as White Christmas, Yankee Doodle Dandy and King Creole, gives this film a warmly human style that's thankfully unpretentious. Doris Day on top-form is a delight, and the songs, which include Makin' Whoopee! and It Had to Be You, really suit her. Shame it's not in colour.

Songwriter Gus Kahn fights to make his name, then has to fight again to survive the Depression.