THAT NIGHT IN RIO

Carmen does her thing!

THAT NIGHT IN RIO (1941). Director: Irving Cummings.

"If I can't be happy with another man's wife, how can I be happy with my own?" -- Pierre.

Larry Martin (Don Ameche) is an entertainer with a jealous and tempestuous girlfriend, Carmen (Carmen Miranda of Copacabana). Larry puts on an act in which he impersonates the wealthy Baron Duarte (also played by Ameche), who has a rather cold marriage to his wife, the baroness (Alice Faye). Due to a business foul-up, the baron has to leave town, and his advisers (S. Z. Sakall and Curt Bois) importune Larry to impersonate the baron -- which causes numerous complications but may save a marriage as well as Larry's relationship with Carmen. That Night in Rio is a big, kitschy, Technicolor musical with spirited performances and fun songs (by Gordon and Warren), including Miranda's "Chicki Chicki Boom" and "Ai Yi Yi." The three lead performers are all terrific, and there's excellent support from J. Carrol Naish [The Kissing Bandit] as rival businessman Machado and Frank Puglia [20 Million Miles to Earth] as manservant, Pedro. Maria Montez plays one of the young ladies but hasn't any lines that I recall. Leonid Kinskey plays Pierre, who is hopelessly in love with the baroness. A similar plot was used for a Maurice Chevalier starrer, as well as for On the Rivera with Danny Kaye.

Verdict: It's hard not to like this amiable nonsense. ***.

FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP

Martha Raye, Carole Landis, Kay Francis, Mitzi Mayfair

FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP (1944). Director: William A. Seiter.

Loosely based on the wartime experiences of the four leading ladies, this has them playing themselves as they go on an entertainment tour for the fighting GI's. Kay Francis, who can't sing or dance, acts as the mistress of ceremonies, while Carole Landis sings, Mitzi Mayfair dances, and Martha Raye (who was not a bad singer herself) mugs and makes the usual jokes about her appearance. John Harvey [The Man with My Face]  plays Landis' love interest, who marries her during the film (Landis did marry an Army man during the war but the union only lasted two years). Phil Silvers plays the Army jeep driver who escorts the ladies everywhere and tries to get a date with Raye. Dick Haymes [Irish Eyes are Smiling] is cast as Mayfield's love interest and he offers a smooth delivery of a couple of romantic ballads. Bandleader Jimmy Dorsey [Lost in a Harem] is pleasant playing himself. Landis' apprehension when Harvey, a flier, is late in coming back from a mission is well delineated, but it leads to an odd sequence. One of the other pilots crashes off-screen and literally a second later Harvey shows up for a clinch., but neither of them ever say a word about the flier who was presumably killed, making them seem cold-blooded to say the least. The film's highlights include Mayfair's scintillating dance numbers; Betty Grable singing "Cuddle Up a Little Closer;" the drag queen-like Carmen Miranda dancing and warbling in her inimitable manner; and especially Alice Faye's moving rendition of  her haunting signature tune, "You''ll Never Know." Another terrific number, Rayes' "With a Wing and a Prayer," was left on the cutting room floor but can be seen on the DVD along with Miranda's rendition of "Mama yo quero." The songs were by McHugh and Adamson. Mayfair was essentially a Broadway tap dancer and made few films. She's cute, perky, and talented, and could have had a nice career playing second leads in romantic musicals.

Verdict: For what it is, a kind of time capsule with good performances from all. ***.

LILLIAN RUSSELL

Alice Faye as Lillian Russell

LILLIAN RUSSELL (1940). Director: Irving Cummings.

A young lady with singing talent reinvents herself as "Lillian Russell" to hide the fact that she's on the stage from her mother (Dorothy Peterson), but mama always knows. Like her mother, Lillian is an early feminist as well as a major theatrical performer with thousands of fans and a host of suitors, including Diamond Jim Brady (Edward Arnold) and "J. L." (Warren William of Dr. Monica), but she marries composer Edward Solomon (Don Ameche). Their marriage ends in tragedy, but waiting in the wings is reporter turned newspaper publisher Alexander Moore (Henry Fonda). Russell was actually married four times, and Solomon didn't die as in the movie, but turned out to be a (perhaps inadvertent) bigamist. As Faye herself noted, in this handsomely-produced (but oddly, black and white) movie, nobody ever ages no matter how many decades go by. Although Faye's singing voice could best be described as "pleasant" (and a little too deep at times), she gives a very good performance as Russell, wisely underplaying many of her more emotional scenes. Arnold is excellent in his portrait of the happy go lucky but broken-hearted Brady, and there are good turns from Ameche and William; Helen Westley [Million Dollar Baby] as Grandma Leonard; Joseph Cawthorn as vocal coach Leopold Damrosch; Ernest Truex as Lillian's father (who in real life was actually separated from his wife); and Nigel Bruce as William Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). Aside from the many musical highlights, there is grandma's recounting of a romantic story involving a mystery gift she once received, and a well-played scene between Arnold and William talking about their feelings toward Lillian. Henry Fonda [The Long Night], who usually leaves me cold, is quite good in this, although this was not an assignment he coveted. Old-time vaudevillians Joe Weber and Lew Fields, playing themselves, almost stop the movie dead with their long comedy routine, but as they happen to be very funny it doesn't matter. Eddie Foy Jr. plays his dad in a brief bit.

Verdict: Despite some inaccuracies, this is a highly entertaining and well-acted biopic. ***1/2.

HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE

Alice Faye and Alan Curtis

HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE (1939). Director: Irving Cummings.

Michael Connors (Don Ameche) a brash wannabee director, talks new Broadway actress Molly Adair (Alice Faye) into going to Hollywood with him to have careers in silent pictures. They manage to become very successful with movie after movie. Michael thinks of himself and Molly as an unbreakable team, but the lack of romance in their lives causes Molly to do the quite sensible thing and marry her handsome co-star, Nicky Hayden (Alan Curtis of Good Girls Go to Paris). This starts Michael on a downward spiral, and eventually a tragedy results. Hollywood Cavalcade is a colorful look at the silent movie era with an attempt at a dramatic underpinning that doesn't quite come off. Alan Curtis' character is so under-developed (and comparatively unmourned) that he hardly exists, and Michael is too unlikable to be sympathetic, despite the obvious heartbreak he's undergoing. The performances are fine, with Faye [King of Burlesque] beautifully underplaying her very emotional sequences; Ameche [Guest Wife] is good if a bit less effective. Donald Meek is wonderful as a producer, and there are guest appearances by Buster Keaton. Rin Tin Tin Jr., and Al Jolson, who recreates a scene from The Jazz Singer. The other recreations of silent movies are all well done and mostly quite funny. Irving Bacon and Robert Lowery have small but well-played parts. The movie is said to be loosely inspired by the lives of Mabel Normand and Mack Sennett, who briefly appears as himself in the film.

Verdict: Glorious technicolor can't quite disguise the pic's deficits, but the film is entertaining. **1/2.

ALICE FAYE: A LIFE BEYOND THE SILVER SCREEN

ALICE FAYE: A LIFE BEYOND THE SILVER SCREEN. Jane Lenz Elder. University Press of Mississippi; 2002.

Alice Faye is one of the few movie stars who walked away from it all when she was still at the top of her game. Faye appeared in several musicals, became a queen of Hollywood, then longed for more of a private life and a successful marriage, and also itched for a chance to show off her acting chops in more serious pictures instead of the "technicolor twaddle" (as Bernstein's "Trouble in Tahiti" would put it) she was usually offered. Fay gave a very good performance in her last picture under the studio system, Fallen Angel, although author Elder writes that most of Faye's best scenes were left on the cutting room floor and Linda Darnell got most of the screen time. (I have a much higher opinion of Preminger's picture than others do.) Furious and disheartened, Faye left the studio and did a radio sitcom with comedian husband Phil Harris [The High and the Mighty] instead, making a brief "comeback" in the second musical version of State Fair (the conditions of the filming as described herein are reflected in Faye's face in the movie) and then a cameo in Won Ton Ton, as well as a stint on Broadway. Faye's first marriage was to handsome crooner Tony Martin [Music in My Heart], but the fact that they never had much time to spend together, the disparity in their success levels, and Martin's "causal romances" caused Faye to divorce him. Although Harris was also alleged to be a ladies man, he was rather homely compared to Martin; perhaps Faye felt he would be less likely to stray. In any case, their marriage lasted for decades. Still, Faye's career we not free from scandal, such as the early rumors of an affair with her mentor Rudy Vallee [The Palm Beach Story] that dogged her for quite some time. Faye appeared in such snappy musicals as King of Burlesque and On the Avenue. Alice Faye: A Life Beyond the Silver Screen is an excellent biography that sets the scene for each period in just enough detail, describes the supporting players in Faye's life without going on too much about them, and is very well-written and researched.

Verdict: A fine job. ***1/2.

STATE FAIR (1962)

Pat Boone and Ann-Margret

STATE FAIR (1962). Director: Jose Ferrer.

In this CinemaScope remake of the 1945 State Fair, the Frake family are off not to a fair in Iowa but in Texas. Mom (Alice Faye) and Dad (Tom Ewell) still want ribbons for their mincemeat and boar, respectively, but now the son Wayne (Pat Boone) races cars while sister Margy (Pamela Tiffin), still restless, is bored with her now-handsome fiance, Harry (David Brandon). At the fair Wayne meets up with entertainer Emily (Ann-Margret) and Margy encounters radio interviewer Jerry (Bobby Darin). Now let's see -- Darin  and Boone [Mardi Gras], of course, simply had decades of experience in musical theater (!) but in spite of this they are not as bad singing show tunes as you might expect. In fact, after Tom Ewell, Boone actually gives the best performance in the movie (credit director Jose Ferrer, perhaps). Boone has a nice voice, and puts over such numbers as "That's for Me" and a new song (Rodgers composed several new numbers for this remake), "Willing and Eager." Darin, usually a very different kind of singer, also delivers when he croons "You're Not an Angel." Faye is given a new number that she sings to her daughter, "Never Say No to a Man" and she and Ewell, who obviously can't sing "I Owe Iowa" anymore, perform "The Littlest Things in Texas" instead. The new songs are perfectly pleasant. Unfortunately, "Isn't It Kind of Nice?" is horrendously staged, first as a weird burlesque and then jazzed up with Ann-Margret [Any Given Sunday] tearing at that lobster again while she sings, although she is better when she relaxes a bit doing "Willing and Eager" with Boone. "It's a Grand Night for Singing" doesn't get a big production nearly as good as the one in the original. Unlike Dana Andrews in the first version, Darin plays the character like a cheap and common playboy, making it improbable that Margy would fall for him or vice versa; Wayne's hasty romance with Emily is only slightly more convincing. Wally Cox [The Night Strangler] is funny as the judge who gets inebriated on mincemeat. Alice Faye is okay as the mother, but there are times when you get the impression she'd rather be anywhere else than in this movie. She's given some funny lines -- "[Ewell] won't be happy until that hog shows up in Who's Who" -- but her delivery is always flat. Faye was to play the daughter's role in the 1945 movie but abruptly retired; this was supposedly her comeback. State Fair was finally turned into a Broadway musical in 1996 using songs from both movies and a couple from lesser-known Rodgers and Hammerstein shows.

Verdict: Has some nice moments but decidedly inferior to the original. **1/2.

KING OF BURLESQUE

Alice Faye and a bevy of chorus cuties

KING OF BURLESQUE (1936). Director: Sidney Lanfield.

Kerry Bolton (Warner Baxter of Just Before Dawn) has been very successful as a producer of burlesque entertainment, but he longs for Broadway respectability and embarks on a new career. He also decides to romance a society lady named Rosalind Cleve (Mona Barrie), who is down on her luck and already engaged to handsome singer, Stanley Drake (Charles Quigley of The Crimson Ghost). In a bizarre development Rosalind agrees to marry Kerry if the latter will back Drake financially for a career in opera as well as give him the lead in a high-brow Broadway show. Obviously this is not a recipe for marriage -- or musical -- success. In the meantime, Pat Doran (Alice Faye), who's been carrying the torch for Kerry, is heartbroken and leaves his employ. Will true love win out in the end? Since not enough is made of the strange marital triangle, we're left with some winning production numbers, especially when Bolton finally stages his big show for a comeback. You have to see the gals swinging like trapeze artists over a supper club set to believe it. Fats Waller sings "Got My Fingers Crossed;" little Gareth Joplin tap dances his little heart out; Kenny Baker does a sterling rendition of another of the catchy numbers; and a piece with the chorus boys adroitly tap dancing with Faye is also delightful. The leads are all fine, with nice work from Jack Oakie as Kerry's pal, Joe; Dixie Dunbar as secretary turned singer, Marie; and especially Gregory Ratoff [All About Eve] as a man who impersonates a wealthy Russian backer of the revue. This is a near-MGM style musical from Twentieth Century Fox. Remade as Hello, Frisco, Hello, also with Faye and Oakie, and John Payne replacing Warner Baxter.

Verdict: The story takes a back seat to the snappy numbers. ***.

FALLEN ANGEL

Alice Faye and Dana Andrews

FALLEN ANGEL (1945). Producer/director: Otto Preminger.

" ... and love alone can make the fallen angel rise,  for only two together can enter paradise."

In a small coastal town not far from San Francisco, ex-publicity man Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) has set his sights on the wealthy June Mills (Alice Faye), whose sister, Clara (Anne Revere), may be a tougher nut to crack. Then there's sexy waitress, Stella (Linda Darnell), who may throw a monkey wrench into Eric's schemes if he's not careful. A murder investigation ensues, which brings in tough detective Mark Judd (Charles Bickford), and a suspect named Dave Atkins (Bruce Cabot). Fallen Angel can be looked upon as a mystery, film noir, or whatever you want to call it, but it's full of such good performances and nice moments that it emerges as a strong (if flawed) and compelling drama. In a different role for her, Faye [On The Avenue] is excellent as a woman who loves someone unconditionally -- she has a particularly good moment telling Eric how she feels about him  --  Darnell [Day-Time Wife] is vivid and vital as the saucy waitress, and Andrews [Boomerang] gives another sharp and solid performance, playing a man who is more complex than he first appears. Revere, Cabot, Bickford, as well as John Carradine as a professor and Percy Kilbride as a cafe owner with feelings for Stella, are all on the mark. The story is, perhaps, wrapped up a bit too neatly, but this is an engrossing and interesting movie.

Verdict: One of Preminger's better efforts. ***.

THE GREAT AMERICAN BROADCAST

THE GREAT AMERICAN BROADCAST (1941). Director: Archie Mayo.

A group of earnest performers and others try to bring entertainment to the new radio medium with varying degrees of success. This basic premise is tied to a forgettable triangle plot involving singer Vicki (Alice Faye), her alleged boyfriend, Chuck (Jack Oakie) and handsome Rix Martin (handsome John Payne) -- guess who gets the gal? Cesar Romero also appears as a wealthy man who backs the group in their efforts but is at odds with Rix for a number of reasons. Some of the songs are pleasant [I Take to You; Where You Are; Long Ago Last Night] but Oakie's trashing of the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor isn't funny [as were the Three Stooges in their short, "Micro-Phonies] -- you just wish he'd shut up so you can enjoy the music. There's some great tap dancing by the Nicolas Brothers, but otherwise this is a bit dull. There could probably be a great musical about the early days of radio and bringing entertainment to the masses over the airwaves, but the totally standard Great American Broadcast isn't it. The actors, even Oakie, are fine.

Verdict: Predictable and one-dimensional musical with some memorable songs and a lousy script. **.

ON THE AVENUE

ON THE AVENUE (1937). Directed by Roy Del Ruth.

A charming and genuinely amusing musical with some pleasant (if unspectacular) Irving Berlin songs. Gary Blake (Dick Powell) is the star of a hit Broadway revue, and his co-star, Mona Merrick (Alice Faye), seems a bit smitten with him. In one of the show’s most popular sketches, Mona plays a well-known heiress, Mimi Carraway (Madeleine Carroll), and Blake is her very stuffy father, the Commodore (George Barbier). Father and daughter Carraway are outraged by the sketch and Mimi contacts Gary in an attempt to gain revenge. The two wind up falling in love with each other, naturally, and Blake agrees to make the sketch less offensive. However, a jealous Mona decides she’s not going to take all the juice out of the sketch, and ... well, let’s just say it leads to the funniest sequence in the movie. All three leads and the supporting cast are in top form. Especially notable is Cora Witherspoon as Mimi’s free-spirited aunt, who thinks the aforementioned sketch is hilarious and seems to be the only person in the family with a sense of humor. The Ritz Brothers do some funny routines but one of them goes on forever and nearly stops the picture dead. Otherwise, this fast-moving musical comedy is a pip.

Verdict: Lots of fun. ***.