1h 46min | Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical | 22 April 1949 | Color
Director: Tay Garnett
Stars: Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, Cedric Hardwicke, William Bendix.
Billy Daniel ... dance supervisor
Al Mann ... dance assistant
Josephine Earl ... dance director (uncredited)
9th of 45 films for RF; 1st of 3 musicals.
4 songs in the Soundtrack; barely enough to qualify as a musical. Very little dancing, and what there is amounts to ankle-waving; or that's how I remember it.
Pleasant film, but almost makes me curious to read the Twain source material, only to see what the filmmakers missed. (It's on Project Gutenberg. The edition with images makes the chromebook wonky from memory overload. Free Kindle edition on Amazon says 223 pgs.) Was King Arthur such a sneezy sickly sort in the novel?
BC is 20 years older than RF; their romance is not terribly credible. I don't think he croons before she "falls in love". She must be one to be attracted to strangers, the ones who helped the species get stronger by not solely breeding within the tribe.
If WB did any good mugging (facial expressions, not assaults), I missed it. His other good skill, being sympathetic, was definitely not used. It seems like he was just a big strong loyal guy, but not dumb, because he created quite the tale of how he captured BC.
It's just shrugworthy, not more.
Hmm. The '31 version stars Will Rogers, and is online. The IMDb rating is almost identical. It's not a musical, but I put it in the next round of musicals to watch since it's antecedent to this (although at Fox, not Paramount.)
Paramount, dir. Garnett; 6
