1h 25min | Comedy, Music | 30 June 1939
Director: Sidney Lanfield
Stars: Sonja Henie, Tyrone Power, Rudy Vallee, Edna Mae Oliver.
Harry Losee ... choreographer
Stewart Reburn ... SH skating partner, his only film credit
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031907/
Bootleg copy, fuzzy print; not yet on official DVD.
Amazing that all these skating sequences are recreation or a fantasy sequence (the duo of SH & the partner above). No big production numbers, nothing in the film-within-the-film. The Soundtracks only lists songs sung (all written by Irving Berlin, nothing familiar), not what SH skates.
Skating/dance sequences:
- 18 min: SH rehearses her class (2nd-6th graders?) on the ice; cute. The real fun is after, when she has to chase the smallest boy, who speedskates like a demon (his only film credit). She can keep up of course. I'm not going to write a spoiler.
- 33 min: Back to Back, sung by Mary Healy, joined by an ensemble demonstrating the dance on stage, then joined by the nightclub patrons including RV+SH and TP+EMO; also cute.
- 49 min: fantasy sequence. While they sit poolside in Hollywood, Minnesotan SH is talking with RV about missing snow, and we dissolve to SH & partner skating on a large lovely nightclub-y rink. Amazing how they make the same moves, but she looks feminine and he looks masculine. Beautiful.
- 73 min: SH back in MN, skates alone, no audience, just to beautify her life (and ours), like she's happy to be home. Olympic stuff.
I was very offended when TP & EMO threw many, many champagne glasses into the rocks between the beach house and the ocean. Dogs and people are going to cut their feet.
In the songfest I'm Sorry for Myself (starts 63 min with Mary Healy), we get a quartet called The King Sisters in the credits. I remember the King Family pretty well from 60's/70's TV, and this print was very fuzzy, but I don't think these King sisters were on TV with the King Family.
Preceding them is a quintet of black singers (servers at the buffet). I can't find anything in the massive number of credits to help me identify them. They might be there among the "unidentified role"s, or maybe they're absent. That's a shame; it was a brief specialty, but on par with the King Sisters, at least.
I definitely miss the big production numbers, but SH's skating stands well on its own.
Fox, dir. Lanfield; 7-
