BELLE OF THE YUKON

Randolph Scott and Gypsy Rose Lee

BELLE OF THE YUKON (1944).  Director: William A. Seiter. 

Former con man "Honest" John Calhoun (Randolph Scott of Captain Kidd) owns an Alaskan nightclub and saloon which is managed by Pop Candless (Charles Winninger). Pop's daughter, Lettie (Dinah Shore), is breathlessly in love with handsome piano player, Steve (William Marshall), but there is a rumor that Steve may have a wife and children. Then John's old girlfriend, an entertainer named Belle De Valle (Gypsy Rose Lee), turns up as the star attraction at the saloon  -- and with marriage in mind. When Honest John decides to open a bank and importunes everyone to put their money in it, the trouble really begins. 

Dinah Shore and William Marshall

Belle of the Yukon is one of those movies that is perfectly pleasant while it's unfolding, but when it's over you realize that there really wasn't much to it. There's no great plot to speak of aside from the misunderstandings between Lettie and Steve and John and Belle, and attempts to make off with the bank's gold engineered by George (Robert Armstrong) and Sheriff Maitland (Guinn "Big Boy" Williams). The songs by Burke and Van Heusen [Duffy's Tavern] are no great shakes although "A Slay Ride in July" is one that could grow on you. Scott is stalwart but not really a deft comedian; Gypsy Rose Lee (the subject of Gypsy) is okay but nothing that special; Dinah Shore sings quite well and is reasonably appealing; and William Marshall has little to do but look quite dreamy and now and then punch out the sheriff. Charles Winninger and Florence Bates as Lee's companion easily walk off with the movie, which so often was the case. 

Verdict: Amiable if minor-league piffle with some good performances. **1/2. 

THE STRIPPER

Richard Beymer and Joanne Woodward

THE STRIPPER (1963). Director: Franklin J. Schaffner. Based on the stage play "A Loss of Roses" by William Inge.

Along with her associates in a traveling magic act, Lila Green (Joanne Woodward) comes to the town where she lived as a child, but then is stranded when her boyfriend, Ricky (Robert Webber), runs off to greener pastures with all of their cash. Lila gets a room with a widow, Helen (Claire Trevor), who was her neighbor years ago, and who has a grown son named Kenny (Richard Beymer). Kenny and Lila develop an undeniable attraction to one another, but considering the age difference -- Woodward was eight years older than Beymer -- and everything else, Lila is afraid of being hurt and lonely once again. Then Ricky comes back into her life with a proposition ...

Claire Trevor and Richard Beymer

The Stripper is a lovely and absorbing film with three excellent lead performances. Although never considered a great beauty as such, Woodward [From the Terrace] has never looked better and she is excellent as Lila. (Marilyn Monroe, who was superb in the film adaptation of Inge's Bus Stop and was four years older than Woodward, might have been considered for this role had she not died tragically the previous year.) Beymer [Five Finger Exercise] gives a sensitive and intelligent performance as well, and Trevor [The Velvet Touch] is as adept as ever. Webber makes a very effective slime ball, and others in the cast include Gypsy Rose Lee and the odd Louis Nye as his associates (neither of them are especially memorable) and Carol Lynley, who makes a nice impression as a neighbor who has a crush on Beymer. Michael J. Pollard brings his own brand of quirkiness as a strange buddy of Kenny's who seems to have a thing for Lila but gets nowhere with her. The film could have used more scenes depicting the growing relationship between Kenny and Lila, but otherwise this is a very good movie.

Verdict: Strong cast and interesting situations add up to a memorable picture. ***1/2. 

SCREAMING MIMI

SCREAMING MIMI (1958) Director: Gerd Oswald.

After nearly being stabbed to death by a maniac, Virginia Wilson (Anita Ekberg) is sent to a sanitarium. She runs off with her doctor (Harry Townes) and reinvents herself as "Yolanda Lange," exotic dancer. When she is attacked on the street one night, everyone assumes she was nearly the second victim of "the ripper," who stabbed another blond beauty to death a month before. Phil Carey is newspaperman Bill Sweeney, who falls in love with Yolanda, and Gypsy Rose Lee is her employer, owner of El Madhouse nightclub. Carey decides to try and find out who the ripper is, and what he has to do with Yolanda. Part of the mystery centers on a figurine of a screaming woman that Sweeney believes is a fetish for the killer. Based on a novel by Fredric Brown, Screaming Mimi might be considered a very early "mad slasher" flick were it not for the fact that its style is completely different from that genre, which began in the late 70's. For one thing, Screaming Mimi has no style, tension, or suspense, making it hard to care who the slasher is or his connection to Virginia/Yolanda. Too much has been made of the fact that Virginia is attacked while taking an outdoor shower in a film made two years before Psycho -- the movies and the sequences are really nothing alike. There were other pre-Psycho films where the killer had psycho-sexual motives. The psychological aspects of Screaming Mimi are dubious. There's some moody if unspectacular photography from Burnett Guffey. The uncredited score seems to have been lifted from a much better picture.

As for the buxom Ekberg? Well, she isn't awful. She manages to get across the emotions of her character, although not with any kind of Katharine Hepburn-like skill. Some might say she's almost out-acted by her protective, snarling Great Dane, Devil (who isn't much use in protecting her on two separate occasions). Ekberg's "dancing" is both sexy and comical. Gypsy Rose Lee, who isn't bad, is given the best line: "The way he looks at her you'd think a bosom is something unique." (Well, Ekberg's bosom was kind of unique.) There seems to be a hint that Lee's character may be gay, but this isn't explored. Townes is effective as the doctor who's madly in love with his deeply disturbed patient. With all that's supposedly going on, it's amazing how dull the movie is. Screaming Mimi is not a gruesome shocker or flamboyant thriller along the lines of William Castle's Homicidal, more's the pity. Gerd Oswald also directed the far superior A Kiss Before Dying. He doesn't seem to have been inspired much by the script for Screaming Mimi.

Verdict: Even less interesting than it sounds.