1h 22min | Comedy, Musical, Romance | 17 September 1943
Director: John Brahm
Stars: Sonja Henie, Jack Oakie, Cesar Romero, Carole Landis, S.Z. Sakall, Cornel Wilde, Woody Herman.
Kenny Williams ... musical sequences staged by
Fanchon ... musical sequences supervised by
bootleg; slightly fuzzy copy.
Most of the story takes place in Canada, where SH & SZS are waiting 8 weeks for their quota numbers. While there, Norway is invaded by Germany. That happened in April 1940.
Cesar Romero sings! In a big fur coat with big fur mittens and fur hat.
Skating/dancing (9 chapter stops, every 10 min):
- ch1. CL & CR sing I Like It Here in rehearsal with WH orch.
- ch2. WH band plays Wintertime during sleigh ride to the hotel.
- Performance block begins:
- ch4. SH skates with a partner in black outfit with feather skirt, cuffs, hat in performance.
- ch4. WH orch (with a woman on trumpet) with chorus sing Dancing in the Dawn.
- ch5. SH skates alone in military style white/silver costume.
- ch5. SH skates with 2 partners in bird costumes, she in white, they in black. Bird-costumed chorus bookends the piece at start and finish.
- ch7. SH & CR dance in performance.
- ch8. SH skates in big production number (or composite of 2 numbers: floors are different) in NYC with more bird-costumed chorus.
Woody Herman's segments are very enjoyable. The skating is great, as usual.
CR does most of the heavy comedy lifting. He gets a long sequence in ch8 where he's hurriedly sneaking around the hotel in long underwear, and in ch3 he gets physical with Cuddles Sakall, plus some more. JO's comedy is mostly verbal/postural, although he does get physical (perhaps a stunt double) at one point.
The romantic polygons are complicated: CW with SH and a woman magazine editor, CR with SH and CL. Perhaps a concave hexagon with SH as the center vertex?
SH's hair color varies a lot throughout the film.
SH makes only 2 more films after this.
With a better print, this might be an 8.
Fox, dir. Brahm; 7+
