Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Lady of Burlesque
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by James Gunn from the novel by Gypsy Rose Lee
1943/USA
Hunt Stromberg Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Biff: What’s the matter with comics?

Dixie: I went into show business when I was seven years old. Two days later the first comic I ever met stole my piggy bank in a railroad station in Portland. When I was 11 the comics were looking at my ankles. When I was 14 they were…just looking. When I was 20 I’d been stuck with enough lunch checks to pay for a three-story house. Naw, they’re shiftless, dame-chasing, ambitionless…[/box]

This is a reasonably entertaining low-budget mystery/comedy with the always excellent Barbara Stanwyck in the title role.

Dixie Daisy (Stanwyck) is the newest headliner in a pretty sedate burlesque show.  She has grander ambitions and a life-long grudge against comics.  Naturally, she is pursued by one, Biff Branigan.  When Dixie is attacked back stage and other burlesque artistes start being strangled with their own G-strings, she and Biff become allies in solving the crimes.

This one has a little bit of everything – snippets of burlesque acts (the camera discretely changes focus during the bumps), plenty of backstage banter and catfights, romance, and of course the mystery.  Stanwyck is good as the hard-nosed Dixie.  She’s an enthusiastic dancer if not the world’s greatest singer.

Lady of Burlesque was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Stanwyck and company sing and dance to “The G-String Song”

Son of Dracula
Directed by Robert Siodmak
Written by Eric Taylor from a story by Curt Siodmak
1943/USA
Universal Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Count Dracula: [as his coffin is burning] Put it out! Put it out, I tell ya’![/box]

First we get Bela Lugosi as Frankenstein’s Monster.  Now it’s Lon Chaney, Jr. as Dracula. What were they thinking?

Katherine Caldwell (Louise Albritton) is a “morbid” believer in the occult.  She is eagerly expecting a visit from Count Alucard (Chaney) to her Southern plantation home. Everybody associated with her, including fiance Frank, takes an instant disliking to him.   Katherine marries him any way.  Her family hires vampire expert Prof. Lazlo (J. Edward Bromberg) to help out.  Double crosses and mild horror ensue  With Evelyn Ankers as Katherine’s sister.

The highlight of this film is some excellent low-key shots by future film noir master Siodmak.  Otherwise, it is pretty lame.  Chaney is even more unlikely as Hungarian count that he was a the son of an English lord.

Trailer

Thank Your Lucky Stars
Directed by David Butler
Written by Norman Panama, Melvin Frank and James V. Kern from an original story by Everett Freeman and Arthur Schwartz
1943/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Warner Bros. Homefront Collection DVD

[box] I’m either their first breath of spring/ Or else, I’m their last little fling/ I either get a fossil or an adolescent pup/ I either have to hold him off/ Or have to hold him up/ The battle is on, but the fortress will hold/ They’re either too young or too old – “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old,” lyrics by Frank Leosser [/box]

Yet another all-star variety show from 1943.  It’s a mixed bag, with a bit too much framing story, but some of the numbers are unmissable.

Producer/MC Farnsworth (Edward Everett Horton) and composer/conductor Dr. Schlenna (S.Z. Sakall) are putting on the “Cavalcade of Stars” as a benefit for the war effort.  Dr. Schlenna is desperate to get Dinah Shore in the show.  Unfortunately, she is managed by Eddie Cantor and he won’t let her participate unless he does.  Very reluctantly,  the two allow Cantor to be Honorary Chairman of their Committee.  He immediately makes a complete nuisance of himself.  (Cantor makes himself the butt of every joke throughout.)

In the meantime, Pat Dixon (Joan Leslie) is looking for someone to perform the very bad song she wrote called “Moon Dust”.  She chances upon aspiring singer Tommy Randolph (Dennis Morgan) who is trying, without success, to get a contract to sing on Cantor’s radio show.  He makes such a bad impression on Cantor that the two resort to kidnapping the star and substituting him for a look-alike Hollywood tour bus driver (also Cantor) who saves the day.

Other than the Leslie-Morgan songs in the framing story (which are pretty bad), the bulk of the film is devoted to numbers from famous Warner Bros. movie stars in either the dress rehearsal or the benefit gala.  Among them are John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, Alan Hale, Jack Carson, Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Errol Flynn, Hattie McDaniel, Willie Best, Ida Lupino, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, and Humphrey Bogart.

John Garfield and some of the others demonstrate why they didn’t make it as musical comedy stars but some of the acts are surprisingly good.  Bette Davis has trouble carrying a tune as well but she has so much screen presence that her song ends up being really enjoyable.  Hattie McDaniel, Willie Best, and many more sing and dance delightfully to “Ice Cold Katy”.  (I always love it whenever Hattie McDaniel is allowed to sing.)  I think my favorite act was Errol Flynn sending up his heroic image in the British music hall style number “That’s What You Jolly Well Get”.  The man seemingly could do anything.  I haven’t had much exposure to Cantor before but I thought he did quite well.

Arthur Schwartz and Frank Loesser were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song for their song “They’re Either Too Old or Too Young”

Errol Flynn sings “That’s What You Jolly Well Get”

L’éternel retour (“Love Eternal”)
Directed by Jean Delannoy
Written by Jean Cocteau
1943/France
Films André Paulvé
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box] Tristram: Soft – who is that, stands by the dying fire?

The Page: Iseult.

Tristram: Ah! not the Iseult I desire. — Matthew Arnold, Tristram and Iseult[/box]

Jean Cocteau was at his best in getting at the mythic beating heart of fairy tales and legends, here a modern version of the ancient story about the adulterous love between Tristan and Isolde.

Patrice (Cocteau’s partner and muse Jean Marais) is visiting his wealthy uncle Marc.  The chateau is also occupied by Gertrude, the sister of Marc’s deceased wife, her husband, and their son Achille.  The entire Frossin clan is the stuff of nightmares but Achille, a grown-up dwarf whom his mother treats as a young child, is particularly evil.  They are all obsessed with jealousy of Patrice.

Patrice takes them in his stride.  He decides what Marc needs is a wife.  He finds an ideal candidate on an island in the form of the young, very blonde Nathalie (Madeleine Solonge), who is being terrorized by her drunken boyfriend.  Nathalie agrees to leave with Patrice. Her protector Anne provides a bottle of love potion marked “Poison” for Nathalie to use if she cannot work up enthusiasm for the middle-aged Marc.

Marc likes Nathalie at once and a wedding quickly follows.  He encourages the teasing friendship between Nathalie and Patrice.  One night when they are back from one of their athletic endeavors, Patrice suggests that they get drunk.  Achille secretly dumps the contents of the bottle in their glasses.

The two are now overtaken by a passion that remains unconsummated.  The Frossins make sure Marc finds out about this and Patrice is exiled.  He steals Nathalie away but she is found out and meekly returns to the chateau.  Patrice takes up with a brunette, also named Nathalie.  But nothing can prevent the lovers’ tragic reunion.

The filmmakers managed to come up with the blondest and most square-jawed actors in all of France for this.  It is astounding how Teutonic they look.  The villains are all brunettes. Perhaps no deeper meaning should be read into all this.  At any rate, it is a visually beautiful telling of the story, with less flourishes than La belle et la bête but some of the same fairly tale feeling.  The characters were a bit too symbolic to be fully engaging.

Montage of clips – no subtitles but little dialogue

Flesh and Fantasy
Directed by Julien Duvivier
Written by Ernest Pascal, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Ellis St. Joseph from stories by Ellis St. Joseph, Oscar Wilde, and Laslo Vádnáy
1943/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/Universal Vault Series DVD

[box] “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” ― Edgar Allan Poe[/box]

Edward G. Robinson is the standout in this anthology of three supernatural tales from French exile Julian Duvivier.

In the framing sequence, a man (Robert Benchley) appears to be shook up about something.  He tells his friend that a fortune-teller told him something would happen.  Then he had a dream in which the event did not happen.  Since he doesn’t believe in either dreams or fortune teller, and one of the two must be true, he is scared.  The friend proceeds to read him three tales which will clear things up.  (How, I never understood.)

The first of the stories concerns an ugly, bitter woman (Betty Field) who has been yearning after a handsome law student (Robert Cummings).  It is Mardi Gras and the owner of a mask shop gives her a mask that will allow her to be a beauty for the evening.

The best of the bunch stars Edward G. Robinson as a none-too-ethical lawyer.  He attends a party where a mysterious man (Thomas Mitchell) is telling fortunes.  At this affair, the lawyer’s lady finally agrees to marry him.  But the fortune teller has seen something amiss with his palm.  He finally drags out of him that he is destined to commit murder.  The evil little man encourages him to pick someone who will never be missed to get the crime out of the way before the wedding.  The lawyer is willing but the intended victims prove to be surprisingly hard to kill.  With Dame May Whitty and C. Aubrey Smith as the elect.

In the final tale, Charles Boyer is a circus tightrope walker.  He has a dream in which he falls to his death, while a woman wearing odd earrings screams.  He is so disturbed he can no longer do his act.  The management takes the troupe back to New York where he suggests the acrobat resume a less dangerous trick.  En route in the ocean liner, he meets the woman of his dreams (Barbara Stanwyck).

All of the stories have twists, something like an early “Twilight Zone”.  Unfortunately, there is also quite a bit of fairly rote romance in the first and the last episodes.  The middle tale has some mild thrills and some excellent acting by Robinson and Mitchell.

Trailer – also includes at the end the trailer to the “B” feature Destiny which was a fourth episode split off from Flesh and Fantasy