She’s a high-school-age Shirley Temple, but distracted by playboy artist Cary Grant.

It’s The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, the 1947 Hollywood hit adapted in 1949 for Lux Radio Theater, with two of its original stars. (Myrna Loy, as Shirley’s older sister, the judge, was replaced for the radioplay by Frances Robinson, a frequent Lux cast member.)

And it’s not much of a lesson in journalism… High School newspaper editor Shirley, smitten, but technically “interviewing” for a story, asks the famous artist (who just happens to look like Cary Grant) whether he’s ever been in love… and whether she’d make a good model.

“Goodbye Miss Winchell,” he says to the 17-year-old, invoking the name of the naion’s best-known gossip columnist, but she gets it into her head that he wants to paint her, and somehow gets into his apartment to wait for him…

The results are a bit 1949 predictable… and we probably will not get back to the newsroom.

This also begins to sound a little like the “A date with Judy” radio episode I listened to a few weeks ago. In that case, Charles Boyer was the teenage reporter’s interview subject… but although starstruck, she wasn’t as interested in romance.

Back to The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, as you can see in the trailer below, both Myrna Loy’s character and visual gags had bigger parts in the original movie.

Footnote: When she played that perky 17-year-old on radio, Shirley Temple was actually 21, married, a young mother, and about to get a divorce… She remarried and retired from show biz the next year, at 22. Eight years later she did some TV before going on to a political career: an unsuccessful run for Congress, followed by appointments to the U.N. and two ambassadorships. See more on the Shirley Temple Wikipedia page.