as Singer / Dancer Royce Blackburn as Singer / Dancer Reception Bosley Crowther of The New York Times declared that the best thing in the film was Gene Nelson's gymnastics-dance number. He warned his readers that if they looked closely they would realize that the unnamed play in the opening credits "is none other than those authors' vastly humorous and neatly trenchant The Male Animal... (The) Warner boys have so rearranged and watered down the plot of the original that the resemblance is blissfully remote...And where Mr. Thurber and Mr. Nugent made the fate of their hero turn upon his daring to read a letter by Bartholomew Vanzetti to his English class, Mr. Milne has worked up a crisis over the rights of the little lady to stay in school... But, plainly, the stubborn endeavor to weave a musical story line into the stout fabric of The Male Animal—and such a silly musical story line, at that—has resulted in a combination that does credit to neither one. The musical story is routine...the play has been woefully stripped of humor, pertinence and sting. Bruce Humberstone, who directed, must have felt himself working on mud". In his afterword to TCM's June 2020 airing of the film, Dave Karger observed that in 1952, a production using the plot of the original play and the 1942 film adaptation would have been impossible, because Hollywood was in the grips of the anticommunist attitudes of the McCarthy era. References External links 1952 films 1952 musical comedy films 1952 romantic comedy films American musical comedy films American romantic comedy films American romantic musical films American films based on plays Films based on works by James Thurber Films directed by H. Bruce Humberstone Films set in universities and colleges Warner Bros. films 1950s English-language films 1950s American films