1h 30min | Comedy, Drama, Musical | 30 August 1940
Directors: Dorothy Arzner, Roy Del Ruth (uncredited)
Stars: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032376/
Rented on Google Play with a coupon, excellent print.
I previously rated this 5, meaning "don't watch this again." But without documenting the reasons, that's not too helpful.
It definitely is a music/al, with lots of ballet (some professional), cooch dancing, and G-rated (but tasteless) burlesque singing/dancing.
Lucille Ball plays a hard-hearted dancer who decides being the headliner in burlesque is better than struggling for art. She's mean and unpleasant, and this role is 1/3 of why I don't like the film. Don't get me wrong, LB is very effective in the role. I just don't want to see a movie about this character. This is LB's 49th role of 86 feature films. About 5 films from now we get her paired with Desi in a comedy. Looks friendlier.
I've always liked Maria Ouspenskaya. She plays the teacher/manager of the dance troupe to which LB & MO'H belong. But just when we get to like her, they kill her off. Why? Why clutter the film with a character whose death is meaningless?
I don't remember liking Louis Hayward in anything, and I feel like I always dislike him. Perhaps because he specializes in the type we have here: spoiled, depressed, wealthy, destructive. I've rated 12 movies in his oeuvre, ratings 456666666677, and don't remember any of them. Both of the 7s are non-musical dramas from 1946. I don't own any of the 12 titles. So his character, plus Ouspenskaya's, make another 1/3 of why I don't like the film.
Maureen O'Hara (b. 1920) is luminous. This is her 6th of 55 films. I liked 2 of the previous efforts: Jamaica Inn and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (both '39); neither is a musical. (I haven't seen the other 3.) Her character also chooses burlesque to survive, but she plays the stooge to LB's star. So she performs a little amateur ballet at each show while the men boo her, wanting Lily White (LB) back on stage. She doesn't even get to be comedic. It's pathetic, and even though she gives the audience a piece of her mind one night, I didn't like it. I don't care that a woman directed, and we get some slightly feminist rhetoric in the MO'H speech.
Ralph Bellamy plays the ballet impresario who sees MO'H and sweeps her away to the World of Dance. The End. The powerful man rescues the damsel in distress after all. This and the entire suffering of MO'H is the Last 1/3 accounted for.
RKO, dir. Arzner & Del Ruth; 5
