1h 17min | Comedy, Romance | November 1948
Director: Frederick De Cordova
Stars: Sonja Henie, Olga San Juan, Dorothy Hart, Michael Kirby, Arthur Treacher, Arthur O'Connell, Ray Teal.
Louis Da Pron ... dance director
Catherine Littlefield ... skating choreographer
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040251/
bootleg, poor print.
8th of 23 directing credits for Johnny Carson's longtime producer; 4th music/al, 2nd in this quest, the other being For the Love of Mary ('48).
Michael Kirby (b. '25) is SH's (b. '12) romantic interest, and looks to be her actual skating partner. This is last of 11 films, and he was not partnered with her before. His acting is fine, as is his skating. This blurry print prevents me from evaluating whether she looks much older than he. Her personality is always so sunny, I can imagine it not being very obvious.
Arthur O'Connell's (b. '08) 25th of 75 films; his 3rd film in the quest. He doesn't perform musically. He looks weird weird without a mustache.
Ray Teal's (b. '02) 152nd of 245 films; in his spare time, he did 252 TV episodes, 98 of which were Bonanza ('60-'72).
This is the last SH film. The penultimate was It's a Pleasure ('45, International Pictures); the Universal-International merger happened in '46. (SH's '43 film was at Fox.)
Somehow I'm not bothered by her criminal activity, which was spontaneous, but deliberate: SH & OSJ take off in the luxury car SH was driving as a film extra, and she instigates a Thelma & Louise style adventure, except they don't ski off a cliff.
We get plenty of skating (with her speed well captured, as usual; I wonder if she brought a technician with her to each film) and some skiing here, although it's not clear that she's doing her own skiing. Unfortunately the Soundtracks doesn't identify songs where she skates, and I didn't track them by chapter (maybe next time). My guess is 5-7 skating numbers. Soundtracks does show her singing (dubbed) twice with OSJ, and OSJ has a solo at the opening of the film; none of those is attached to skating.
Although the quality of this print is awful, I'm thrilled to have it. Somehow I got the impression that she didn't skate in this one, but that's far from true. With a good print the rating might increase.
Universal, dir. De Cordova; 7-
