For some reason, My Six Loves seems to have slipped between the cracks and just doesn't get shown on TV, at least not these days. In brief, it's the story of a show business star who takes a break due to exhaustion - and finds six basically abandoned kids living in her garden shed. Of course the story is going to be about her developing a relationship (or more) with them, I don't have to tell anyone that, it's a given.
There are some rather odd things about this movie that I'd like to point out, concerning one of the kids - a youngster named Billy Hughes Jr. who plays the eldest child and sort of the 'head' of the detached sibling family. Billy Hughes was becoming known in Hollywood for being able to play darker or more intense roles, and while parts of his role here fit him - being able to carry that chip on his shoulder towards God for instance - other parts are such a bad fit that it's painful to watch. There is a musical number where the kids each have to act out something that goes with the song, and young Hughes was clearly not comfortable doing this. As I said, it's painful to watch. It would be like asking someone like Humphrey Bogart to appear in the Do Re Mi song from 'Sound of Music'.
One rather ironic flaw to the movie is that the six kids Reynolds finds in her garden shed have been dumped and are penniless, wearing shabby old clothes... yet young Billy Hughes is sporting a dandy gold ring in 2/3 of his scenes! How that got past the director I can't guess but someone must have been kicking themselves big time when they realized the huge boo-boo of an impoverished kid wearing bling.
Debbie Reynolds was great, she always is. The story is pleasant enough and there have been far worse movies made (and better too). This is a real Hollywood oddity that somehow doesn't get shown anymore. Worth watching just to see it as part of Reynolds' body of work, and for Billy Hughes in his good and not so good moments of the film.
