By mid-1951, it was clear that Columbia Records was onto a good thing by putting
Doris Day into a recording studio just after she finished making each of her Warner Bros. movie musicals and having her cut versions of the songs from the films. (Warner had no record company then, so there could be no actual soundtrack albums.) It didn't really matter that
Gordon MacRae, her co-star in 1950's Tea for Two and in On Moonlight Bay, was unavailable due to his own recording contract with Capitol. Columbia drafted in Jack Smith, the movie's second male lead, and had him cover for
MacRae on the duets of "Till We Meet Again" and "Cuddle Up a Little Closer," as well as re-creating his own duets with
Day on "Love Ya" (the only newly written song in the score) and "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles." Based on Booth Tarkington stories, On Moonlight Bay was set in the 1910s and stocked with interpolated Tin Pan Alley and show tunes from that era (songs Warner had bought up during the Great Depression and so benefited from promoting).
Day, who had demonstrated her abilities at swing music and at the sophisticated material of
George and Ira Gershwin and Porters, simply turned on her charm to put across this simpler fare. The result was another big success, the fourth straight tie-in album to a
Day picture that Columbia had placed in the Top Five in a year and a half. ~ William Ruhlmann