(95 min theatrical release, 111 min roadshow) Released 1938-01-06
Director: Henry King
Stars: Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Alice Brady
Nick Castle ... dance director (uncredited)
Jack Haskell ... dance director (uncredited)
Geneva Sawyer ... dance director (uncredited)
Genres: Action | Drama | Musical | Romance
No idea why they needed 3 dance directors; perhaps for the crowd scenes during the campaigning and during the fire? There were performances by chorus girls onstage at the music halls, and AF danced with them once or twice. But if the dance director Oscar were still active, I can't imagine this would get nom'd. Frankly, I question whether this deserves a Musical tag; Music seems better. As I said in the last post, I like AF's singing when she's selling it to the crowd, and she does that here.
The 7 is for the fire. Remember Gone With the Wind (1939) is the following year. The assistant director (2nd unit?) won the Oscar, likely for the fire. (Alice Brady, playing the mother, won for Supporting Actress.) Good thing I rated this previously; watching it as a musical does not inspire a 7 rating. But I'll leave it, because I remembered this was a fire epic, and it was even better than I remembered.
Always a pleasure to see our 3 stars. Weird to have 2 AF movies in a row, but the December release was by Universal, and the Fox date was the premiere, 3 months in advance of the wide release.
Watched the roadshow (longer) version first; no idea what they cut to remove 16 minutes.
Right now this film is designated as (1937), but has no release date before Jan '38. I just reported that to IMDb.
Fox, dir. King; 7
