1h 24min | Comedy, Crime, Musical | 5 September 1949
Director: John Farrow
Stars: Betty Hutton, Victor Mature, William Demarest, June Havoc, William Talman.
Billy Daniel ... choreographer
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041795/
Watched online; mediocre print.
I don't like BH, and this is typical frenetic, loud BH stuff. If I take a step back, and look at the fact that she did a pretty good job defending herself with jujitsu, I liked the feminist moment in the film. Come to think of it, she also was putting career ahead of romance (for a while).
I don't like VM either, but he wasn't as annoying here. He was her overly serious director/boyfriend. Perhaps his character was more subdued than when I've seen him in other films in this quest, usually a leering skirt-chaser, or maybe the contrast with BH helped.
There was a musical synopsis of Hamlet that probably needed choreography, but not so much in the dancing sense, but in the need for characters to avoid swords being swung.
Songwriter Frank Loesser wrote all 4 songs listed in the Soundtracks, and acted in the film as the bad guy who played piano.
This was really quite irritating, but saved from a 4 by the semi-feminist ideas.
Paramount, dir. Farrow; 5-
