| No Leave, No Love | |
| Director: | Charles Martin |
| Producer: | Joe Pasternak |
| Music: | George Stoll |
| Editing: | Conrad A. Nervig |
| Studio: | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Distributor: | Loew's Inc. |
| Runtime: | 119 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $1,778,000[1] |
| Gross: | $3,785,000 |
No Leave, No Love is a 1946 American musical comedy film directed by Charles Martin and starring Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn and Pat Kirkwood.[2] [3]
Mike, a Marine and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, returns with his pal Slinky from fighting in the Pacific during World War II. Mike expects to marry his hometown sweetheart; his mother wants to tell him in person that she has married someone else. Most of the film involves the efforts of Susan, a popular radio personality, to keep him from finding out or going home until his mother makes it to New York from Indiana. Susan and Mike fall in love; misunderstandings ensue. The shenanigans of the implausibly unpleasant and larcenous Slinky fill out the action, and the musical element is provided by several appearances of then-famous performers in nightclubs and on Susan’s radio show. The story is bookended by Mike’s arrival in the waiting room of a maternity ward and the birth of his and Susan’s son. Slinky gets the last word when Rosalind announces that she is pregnant.
The film earned $2,891,000 in the US and Canada and $894,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $629,000.[1] [4]
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times writes in his review: "No Leave, No Love starts rambling along about the second reel, when Van Johnson, as the marine hero, turns things over to his pal, Keenan Wynn. And from there on it is mainly a matter of how comical Mr. Wynn can be with little more helpful material than his sense of humor and a big cigar. It must be said to Mr. Wynn's credit—and to the credit of his director, perhaps—that he does pull some fairly funny business in a strictly low-comedy vein, but it is all rather forced and capricious. And it, too, has its saturation points.[5]