Walking My Baby Back Home (film)

95 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBox office$1.8 million^[1]

Walking My Baby Back Home is a 1953 American musical comedy film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Donald O'Connor, Janet Leigh, and Buddy Hackett.^[2] It was Hackett's film debut.^[3]

Excerpts of the film are used in the Columbo episode "Forgotten Lady", in which Leigh plays a middle aged former film star Grace Wheeler who nostalgically watches the film; Walking My Baby Back Home music composer Henry Mancini was the composer of the Columbo theme music as well.^[4]

Donald O'Connor enjoyed working with Janet Leigh.

She hadn't danced in years but was a real trouper. Nine times out of 10 we'd do all those beautiful dance routines on cement, and she got very tired, started falling a lot on her knees. And her knees started to swell three times their normal size. It was very painful. On the screen you can't tell how she was suffering in that darn thing.^[5]

A World War II veteran joins a minstrel show and falls in love with the daughter of the troupe's patriarch.

• Donald O'Connor as Clarence "Jigger" Miller
• Janet Leigh as Chris Hall
• Buddy Hackett as Blimp Edwards
• Lori Nelson as Claire Millard
• Scatman Crothers as "Smiley" Gordon
• Kathleen Lockhart as Mrs. Millard
• George Cleveland as Col. Dan Wallace
• John Hubbard as Rodney Millard
• Norman Abbott as Doc
• Phil Garris as Hank
• Walter Kingsford as Uncle Henry Hall
• Sidney Miller as Walter Thomas
• The Modernaires as themselves
• The Sportsmen Quartet as themselves (credited as The Sportsmen)

• Walking My Baby Back Home at IMDb
• Walking My Baby Back Home at the TCM Movie Database
• Walking My Baby Back Home at AllMovie
• Walking My Baby Back Home at the British Film Institute^{[better source needed]}