Rendezvous with Annie

The overlooked comedy Rendezvous with Annie — one of more than 400 films directed by Toronto-born Hollywood veteran Allan Dwan — is a frantic, suggestive wartime farce in the vein of Preston Sturges’s The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. Eddie Albert shines as hapless, homesick Corporal Jeff Dolan, an American serviceman stationed in England who desperately misses his dear wife Annie (Faye Marlowe). Two airmen buddies take pity: when they’re assigned to make a quick flight to the U.S. and back, Jeff, AWOL, sneaks along for the ride and has a brief overnight visit with Annie. No one else is the wiser about the secret rendezvous, so when Annie later turns up pregnant, it’s a scandal — and a further comic reversal only makes things more complicated, and more desperate, for Jeff.