The Reluctant Debutante movie storyline. Jimmy (Rex Harrison) and Sheila Broadbent (Kay Kendall), welcome to London Jimmy’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Jane (Sandra Dee). Jane is from Jimmy’s first marriage to an American and has come to visit her father and the stepmother she has never met. While visiting, Sheila has the idea of making Jane a debutante, an idea Jane resists.
Difficulties range from Jane’s apathy to being placed on the marriage block, the determined efforts of Sheila’s cousin, Mabel Claremont (Dame Angela Lansbury), to win wealthy David Fenner (Peter Myers) for her debutante daughter Clarissa (Diane Clare), and Jane’s attraction to David Parkson (John Saxon), an American drummer who plays in the orchestra at the coming-out balls.
The Reluctant Debutante is a 1958 American Metrocolor comedy film in CinemaScope directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by Pandro S. Berman from a screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and William Douglas-Home based on Douglas-Home’s play of the same name. The music score is by Eddie Warner and the cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.
The film stars Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall — whom he had married in 1957 after they worked together on The Constant Husband (1955) — with featured performances by John Saxon, Sandra Dee, and Angela Lansbury. The setting is London’s debutante season amidst the last presentation at Court in 1958. However, because of Harrison’s tax problems, the film had to be made in Paris.
Harrison had learned from Kendall’s doctor that she had been diagnosed with myeloid leukemia, a fact that was kept from Kendall, who believed she was suffering from an iron deficiency. The actor cared for Kendall until her death at the age of 32. She only completed one more film, Once More With Feeling, before her death the following year. In 2003 the film was remade as What a Girl Wants, starring Colin Firth and Amanda Bynes.
The Reluctant Debutante (1958)
Directed by: Vincente Minnelli
Starring: Rex Harrison, Kay Kendall, John Saxon, Sandra Dee, Angela Lansbury, Peter Myers, Diane Clare, Charles Cullum, Sheila Raynor, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Charles Herbert, Michel Thomas
Screenplay by: Julius J. Epstein
Cinematography by: Joseph Ruttenberg
Film Editing by: Adrienne Fazan
Set Decoration by: Robert Christidès
Art Direction by: Jean d’Eaubonne
Music by: Eddie Warner
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: August 14, 1958
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