This Is My Love

Genre: Drama
Released: 1954
Directed by: Stuart Heisler
Starring: Linda Darnell, Rick Jason, Faith Domergue, Dan Duryea
Alfalfa portrays: Unnamed diner patron smitten with waitress Darnell.
Alfalfa's screen time: 23 seconds
Lines of dialogue spoken by Alfalfa: 5

Alfalfa places his eclectic lunch order with counter
waitress Linda Darnell.

Linda Darnell plays Vida Dove, a confused and indecisive waitress who co-owns a restaurant with her sister (Evelyn Myer), played by Faith Domergue.

Dan Duryea portrays Domergue's bitter, disabled husband Murray. His mercurial personality eventually drives his wife to have an affair. Darnell, meanwhile, is engaged to be married to Eddie (Hal Baylor) but is not averse to some serious flirting with Eddie's pal Glenn (Rick Jason).

By movie's end, Duryea is dead from a seizure suffered after a drag-out screaming match with Darnell, who is in hot water with the authorities investigating the death.

6-year old Jerry "Beaver Cleaver" Mathers in his first
screen appearance, playing Darnell's nephew.

Alfalfa makes a brief appearance about a third of the way through the proceedings, as an unnamed customer of Darnell's diner who provides some badly-needed comic relief. Alfalfa, decked out in what looks to be a white navy or merchant marine cap, is wearily placing a run-of-the-mill lunch order with Darnell until he gazes up at his server and is suddenly inspired to greater gastronomic ambitions:

Alfalfa: A glass of orange juice and a hamburger [looks up from menu at Darnell and is clearly smitten] No!...You better make it avocado, egg, bacon and tomato, with some peanut butter and pickles. Make it a double-decker. And a glass of milk...
Short order cook [from behind grill]: I got it! A two-story tummy ache, coming up...

Below: Alfalfa places his order during his brief appearance.

"This Is My Love" is a murky, soap opera-ish film that is most notable (along with our hero's brief appearance) for the striking beauty of its star, Linda Darnell. Darnell appeared in a series of diverse films (the chief standout being her portrayal of Chihuahua in "My Darling Clementine") beginning in the late thirties until her death in 1965 in a house fire. Darnell also appeared in another film in which Alfalfa had a small role, 1949's "A Letter To Three Wives" (she played one of the "wives", Lora Mae Hollingsway.)

Publicity photo depicting Alfalfa pining for server Darnell.
See larger view. Below: Detail image of 27-year old Alfalfa.

Also worth mentioning in "This Is My Love" is the appearance of six-year-old Jerry Mathers in his first-ever film appearance, some three years prior to his casting as Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver in perhaps the single most archetypal suburban sit-com of the late fifties and early sixties. Mathers portrays Darnell's nephew, smack in the middle of a household that is definitely not "Ward and June"-like. He plays opposite real-life sister Susie Mathers, in her first and only film appearance.

Above: Miscellaneous images of Linda Darnell as Vida Dove.
Below: Jerry Mathers saying goodnight to his aunt, played
by Darnell.

William Hopper, who has a small role near the film's end as a District Attorney, also appeared in "Track of the Cat", which co-starred Alfalfa in his most unusual grownup role, centenarian Native American scout Joe Sam. Interestingly, "This Is My Love" was released in 1954, the same year as "Track"; Alfalfa's youthful appearance in "This Is My Love" reminds us again of the remarkable success of his Joe Sam portrayal, turned in around the same time.

Above: The Glendale Dispatch
presaging by about 25 years
the journalistic restraint
of the New York Post.
Below: Opening credits for
"This Is My Love".

Below: Contemporary publicity poster for "This Is
My Love", with Domergue and Darnell in strategic
states of dress.

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