MGM presents Gaby, starring Leslie Caron & John Kerr
One day, one night… to live a lifetime! And you live it with Gaby and Greg, the man she loves… the tender, laughing, fleeting hours.
Then comes the message that means he has gone out of her life — perhaps forever.
And then her contrite woman’s heart sends her into the arms of other men — seeking to give them all that she had denied to her own sweetheart! Then Greg returns…
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Movie review: Gaby (1956)
The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington) May 30, 1956
“Gaby,” at the Riverside, gives ballerina Leslie Caron a chance to do some acting along with her toe-tripping.
In one of the more haunting love mix-ups of World War II, a French-born dancer in London (Miss Caron) meets an American soldier.
As the latter, John Kerr is appropriately tender at times, but somewhat inept in scenes demanding more depth.
When their wedding plans fall through, the soldier plans to call on Miss Caron the following day so the wedding can take place.
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He is, of course, sent overseas. She sees him only through the grilled gate as his train departs. Most of “Gaby” deals with the girl’s remorse at having sent her lover away on his last night.
The announcement of his death completes her moral disintegration, and she decides to be extremely friendly thereafter to every soldier she meets. Her own “return to principles” comes about in a predictable way.
However, the entire matter of her slide from the pedestal of respectability is subtly and tastefully handled.
There’s too little dancing in this one, for a movie which can boast both Miss Caron and her contemporary, ballerina Taina Elg. Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Margalo Gilmore, also. are seen too infrequently as the wealthy British relatives of the American G. I.
“Gaby” is good watching, and accounts frequently for a flurry of sniffles in the sobbing row.
Vintage 1950s movie trailer for Gaby
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