Casanova Brown

Casanova Brown is a 1944 American comedy romantic film directed by Sam Wood, written by Nunnally Johnson, and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Frank Morgan. The film had its world premiere in western France after the Allies had liberated those territories following the D-Day Invasion. The film is based on the 1927 novel An Unmarried Father by Floyd Dell and the 1928 play Little Accident by Dell and Thomas Mitchell, which had been previously filmed by Universal Pictures in 1930 as The Little Accident and in 1939 as Little Accident. Plot Arriving in a small town Rossmore, Illinois by train, college professor Casanova Brown is met by his socialite girlfriend Madge Ferris and tells her not to bring up his trip to New York, where he was trying, unsuccessfully, to publish a book about the notorious 18th-century womanizer, Casanova. Cas decides to ask Madge to marry him, even though her father J.J. warns him against it, saying Madge is nothing but trouble. Just before the wedding, Cas leaves town because of a letter from a Dr. Martha Zernecke summoning him to a Chicago maternity hospital, but promises to be back in time for the wedding. About the letter and what he believes is behind it, Cas tells J.J. of his New York experience with Isabel Drury, of how they fell in love and decided to wed, only to have Cas repeatedly upset Isabel's mother by insulting her belief in astrology, ignoring her warnings that their union would be cursed, then inadvertently burning down the Drurys' house with a smouldering cigarette, he having hid the cigarette in discovering Mrs. Drury's anti-smoking stance. The Drurys had the marriage annulled, but Cas suspects Isabel may have now had his baby. At the hospital, Cas goes through a battery of tests unaware of what they are for. After he is told by a nurse that the tests confirm he is a specimen of good health, he meets Dr. Zernecke who tells him about Isabel having had a baby girl, his baby girl, and that the tests were for their records in Isabel putting the baby up for adoption. In Cas reuniting with Isabel who is still at the hospital, she confirms the baby is biologically his and that she is putting her up for adoption.