1h 24min | Comedy, Musical, Romance, War | 25 April 1944 | Color
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone (as Bruce Humberstone)
Stars: Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye.
Gae Foster ... choreographer: roller skating
Hermes Pan ... choreographer
Alice Sullivan ... choreographer: military number
Angela Blue ... assistant choreographer (uncredited)
In the Tap! Appendix for Condos Brothers. Really should include BG & Hermes Pan for their tapping apache dance.
Production dates: 8 July 1943 - 23 October 1943
Martha Raye marries Nick Condos: (22 February 1944 - 17 June 1953) (divorced) (1 child) (her 4th of 7 marriages; prior divorce 2 Feb '44) (not onscreen together, but performing to the same song)
Melodye Raye Condos, born 26th July 1944
Only 2 more films have multiple Condos Bros: in '44 and '46. After that it's only Steve.
7 performance numbers listed in Soundtracks; custom menu of 24 chapters; favorites bolded:
- ch2. BG sings You're My Little Pin Up Girl
- ch3. You're My Little Pin Up Girl, danced by Condos Brothers (looks like Steve & Nick to me) in dull pull-over sweaters for office clerks after work.
- ch6. Time Alone Will Tell sung by June Hutton and male trio with Charlie Spivak and His Orchestra. (June is related to Ina Ray Hutton, not Betty)
- ch8. Red Robins, Bobwhites, and Bluebirds: sung by MR, ensemble roller-skated dance with patriotically red, white and blue-dyed ostrich feathers. Gloria Nord ... roller skating headliner (uncredited)
- ch10. Don't Carry Tales Out of School sung by BG and 4 male singers, dancing a bit. (These 4 men are used on a webpage about the Condos Bros, but no Condos appear in this number.)
- ch15. Yankee Doodle Hayride sung by Martha Raye
- ch16. Yankee Doodle Hayride danced by Condos Brothers (return to Nick left, Steve right)
- ch18. Once Too Often sung by BG, danced by BG & Hermes Pan in apache garb, not very apache-y dance though (not very mock-violent)
- ch22. Don't Carry Tales Out of School reprise sung by BG
- ch23. The Story of the Very Merry Widow sung by BG, waltzed by ensemble, leads immediately to...
- ch24. Cadence: a lengthy precision drill voice-controlled by BG (who also marches). Very well done.
Please skip the Richard Schickel commentary track. He makes sweeping under- (or non-) researched inaccurate statements that aggravate (especially about B.Berkeley-like numbers), and doesn't mention the name Condos either time they're onscreen. He describes Martha Raye in Monsieur Verdoux ('47) as aggressive and negative as she is here; I remember her more as aggressive and amorous, and remarkably immune to Verdoux's attempts to murder her; maybe I'm mistaken about amorous vs. negative. I tend to assume that his statements where I'm not expert might also be inaccurate. Separate rating for the commentary: 4.
For the film: it's far better than at least 5 of the 6 musicals I watched since Cover Girl (I gave Hey Rookie a 7- because it had so few votes.)
For the film: it's far better than at least 5 of the 6 musicals I watched since Cover Girl (I gave Hey Rookie a 7- because it had so few votes.)
- Visually, it's far better than HR (a public domain print): it's a studio release in color, with colors designed to dazzle.
- The roller-skating number is interesting in contrast with Fox ice-skating: these skates look much heavier, the floor is much smaller, and the routine is designed to be much slower (with those enormous feathers), but it's comparable at some level.
- The apache with BG & HP is strange, because by adopting that setting and costumes, we assume we'll get X, but we get X minus a lot; this pair has danced much prettier stuff, and the low-life milieu doesn't bring them to different/better dancing.
- Even the Condos Brothers are delivering their standard stuff, including the 5-tap wing executed by Nick in the Hayride number; but many Hayride shots are either closeups on their feet (apt for the high-speed footwork) or far away (to show off the spinning windmill?), and their hats shade their faces.
- The Merry Widow number was dull dancing and monochrome costumes, and any reference to widows being merry during wartime seems really tasteless.
- The whole movie has little to do with its title. Yes, the BG character has a pinup photo adored by many GIs; but other than having one of her 500 fiances return to complicate the plot, the film has little to do with the photo.
- Instead, it's about the BG character who lies to make her life more interesting, and she profits from it. (In prior commentaries, Dr. Drew Casper has mentioned that the censors (Production Code Office) was a lot less vigilant with musicals.) Then again, maybe she's merely lying as much as show people do to get their first jobs.
Previously rated 6. I'll add a + for the visual delights.
Fox, dir. Humberstone; 6+
