Cinema: Gather Ye Walnuts

Tammy Tell Me True (Universal) is the sort of film for which projectionists should get hazardous-duty pay. It is aimed at the 14-year-old female mind—that is, at nine-year-old girls. Such an audience is too young to know that this is a sequel to another Tammy movie, in which Debbie Reynolds frisked about in jeans and country, vowels, casting into every troubled soul a bright golden ray of digestive distress. Debbie, at 29, can look forward to several more years of playing perky teenagers. Nevertheless, the studio has found a replacement: 19-year-old Sandra Dee, a chubby blonde with a rosebud mouth and cheeks that look just right for storing walnuts.

Tammy’s one true love has left her because she is an unlearned, shantyboat girl. She is all alone in the world, except for a pet nanny goat, because her grandpa is in jail for—heh, heh—moonshining. So she sets off downstream to Seminola College to learn to talk proper. She arrives just in time, because everyone is feeling powerful sorrowful. The dean of women is on the outs with her artist husband who, in turn, has been deserted by his muse; the college’s aged benefactress is beset by a greedy niece; and John Gavin, a young speech instructor, is sitting home nights. “OOOh,” says Tammy as she sees Gavin, “he gives me a feelin’ that the warmth of the sun is soakin’ into mah innards!” “OOOh,” says the viewer, as Tammy sets everyone’s life in order, “she gives me the feeling that a spilled jugful of hot butterscotch sauce is soaking into my shirt front!”