Customer Reviews

Never Say Goodbye [VHS]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a very funny comedy that I would recommend to any Errol Flynn fan, or, anyone that likes a sweet, family film. It has some familiar Warner Brothers character actors, a very young Eleanor Parker, and a pre-F Troop Forrest Tucker. Flynn is hilarious - starring as an artist specializing in pin-ups. He drinks, fights, sings, dresses as Santa Claus, juggles multiple women - it is really perhaps an autobiographical role.

Very entertaining.

This is not a review...but a desperate plea.

PLEASE release this movie to DVD!!!

This movie is among Errol's best, and by FAR his funniest!

If you agree that this movie should be released on DVD, then please say this review WAS helpful to you and/or post a comment saying so! We NEED this classic movie to watch again and again!

Thank YOU!

Everyone remembers their first kiss and their "first" time and for me this movie represents my first movie that I can actually remember. My step-mother took me to see it when I was but a tender lad of 10 in St Louis, MO.

This movie set in my mind a kind of will to find my own mother although at the time I had not a CLUE as to HOW, IF, or WHEN I would do this, I just had this intense confidence that I COULD and WOULD find her one day.

About all that I remember about this movie is the bombing of a European city and the loss of this little girls mother. I also remember the character Victor (I always thought he was played by David Nivens) as the little girls confidant and her pained frustration at not being able to understand why she could not find her mother and her resistance to the idea of her father's desire to marry this "outsider" and have her take the place of her missing mother. Of course the outsider was in fact her long lost mother from the war years.

Victor was the only trusted link that she had to her mother, as he knew her during the war.

At the end, as the outsider was preparing to leave the family as a failed endeavor at persuading the little girl to accept her as her "NEW" mother, the little girl asks Victor (he was a portrait artist and also did caricatures at her 8th Birthday party) to draw a picture of her mother as he remembered her some 8 years earlier.

Of course Victor did a charcoal sketch of the "outsider" and presented it to the little girl folded in half. As she looked at the image, she thought there was some sort of deception going on and she questioned him about his attempt to fool her.

I cannot for the life of me remember his actual response but it was in the form of a question of "what she wanted to believe". Sorta like the peasant girl in the film Dr. Zhivago not wanting to believe something if it were not true.

The little girl reconciled with her Mother and all ended well that started out so horribly.

For the record, I did search for, and found, my birth mother in Belton, TX in 1970. Unfortunately the ending was not the same, quite the opposite. But we must all search to ease the ache in our heart, the ache I saw and remembered in that movie some 50 years ago.

We NEED this movie on DVD. I'll trade you 4 Three Stooges and a Creature from the Black Lagoon to get it released on a DVD.

DubleDeuce

Please help make available the Rock Hudson movie by the same name.

I don't know how this review was written for the Rock Hudson version of the film of the same name. I can't seem to find it listed. The only one listed is the one with Errol flynn. Please advise. as I recall, the Rock Hudson verison is definitely a winner and deserves 5 stars.

Please help me find the correct film.

Thanks so much.

Rock Hudson and a very young Shelley Fabares.... please make it available on DVD or VHS. I've been looking for this movie forever!! Truly a Rock Hudson classic!

Never say goodbye,1956. This is a really good movie
with Rock Hudson and Shelley Fabares,I first saw this
movie in 1962. it holds fond memories for me.I would
love to have it on DVD.

This is not the version I was looking for.The five stars are for the Rock Hudson version that I am looking for.- can anyone help me to get a copy.

If you have never seen Errol Flynn in one of his more lighthearted roles, this is a good place to start. He plays an artist who paints the pin-up girl type of poster that was popular with the soldiers of WW II. His beautiful ex-wife, who felt he was enjoying his models a little too much, is played by Eleanor Parker. They have a seven-year-old daughter who is wonderfully portrayed by Patti Brady. She is named Phillippa (Flip) after her father, Phillip Gayley. Mr. and Mrs. Gayley have been divorced for a year and Flip is doing the "six months with Mom, sixth months with Dad" routine. She wants her parents back together, and secretly that is what they would like as well. But Grandmother is opposed and Mrs. Gayley and her daughter reside in her home. Though not specifically a Christmas movie, the action takes place over a short period of time and it is around the holiday season. There is a great mix-up scene at Grandmother's house where Flynn is dressed as Santa Claus, but so is the family attorney that Grandmother wants her daughter to marry. They don't realize that Mr. Gayley is there and are surprised by the behavior of the "attorney" who is really Flip's Dad just wanting to be with his daughter (and ex-wife) for Christmas.

Throughout the movie there are times when Mrs. Gayley thinks her husband has changed and that things really will work out for them, but he seems to be a master at getting himself in hot water. His friend, Luigi (wonderful S. Z. Sakall), tries to help him out in his charmingly bumbling way and usually makes matters worse. To complicate things, Flip has been writing to a soldier--a Marine, actually, with the help of her nurse, Cozy. When her father learns about it and sees the picture of herself that his daughter is about to send him, he substitutes a pin-up of her mother that he had done. When the Marine shows up at Christmas time to see his "Smoochie" he, of course, thinks it is Flip's mother. She plays along to make her ex-husband jealous. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave..."

This movie has humor, wit, charm, and even a tender moment or two with a little girl who doesn't want her parents apart, and it is funny to see the nod to Errol Flynn's Robin Hood role. I recommend this movie to all who love a romantic comedy from the classic era. Even if this isn't your genre, I think you may enjoy this one.

There are no extras on this disc--not even a chapter menu. The sound and picture quality are good. This is one of the Warner Brother's Archive releases (which were easier to spot when they all had blue covers--but I like the color covers better). That means it is a DVD-R and will not play in a "play/record" unit. You need a "player only" model to view this disc. It is presented in the 1:33:1 ratio--full screen. Don't let any of this deter you from seeing this movie. It is great fun--highly recommended. Then why only four stars? I think it may deserve four and a half, but it isn't quite what I would give a five star rating.

Errol Flynn gives a very relaxed, engaging performance as an artist, divorced for a year from his wife, who wants her back, which would also please the couple's seven year old daughter very much. Eleanor Parker is the ex-wife who also has feelings for her ex-husband. With everybody still loving everybody, getting back together should be easy, but this film tosses many problems in their way. The script is basically an extended sitcom, with mix-ups, disguises, pratfalls, and a cute kid. Fortunately, the whole cast seems to be having fun with the material, light as it is, which helps to get past many of the contrived situations. Flynn and Parker have a breezy chemistry here, and Forrest Tucker, as a Marine caught up in the tangle, is fun too. Patti Brady, as the little girl, is a natural that doesn't get on your nerves like some kid actors. Humphrey Bogart has an unusual "cameo" that is worth a laugh. Never Say Goodbye isn't great comedy but the performers play it with energy and the right touch.