One Touch of Venus

The window dresser at a department store kisses the newly arrived statue of Venus as a joke. The statue comes to life. The goddess walks out of the store and starts following him; the man, who has no idea what is happening, has a job and a fiancée, and both are in danger. The store owner meanwhile goes after the missing statue, because it is expensive and nobody believes a goddess has come to life. The source is a musical that ran on Broadway with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash. The film adaptation dropped most of the songs and came down to eighty-two minutes; the best known of what remains is Speak Low. Ava Gardner plays Venus in one of the parts that established her stardom; her singing was dubbed by another voice. Robert Walker plays the window dresser and Eve Arden the secretary who steals every scene she is in. The idea is clever but the film does not take it all the way.