1h 18min | Comedy, Musical | 14 August 1953 | Color
Director: Claude Binyon
Stars: Bob Hope, Tony Martin, Arlene Dahl, Rosemary Clooney, Millard Mitchell, William Demarest, Fred Clark, Robert Strauss.
Nick Castle ... choreographer
In the Tap! Appendix for The Four Step Brothers. They appear late in the Ali Baba number, which I've linked below. BH is tapping with them, with less precision and no stunts.
Songs performed:
- Girls, Sung/danced by the chorus (including BH) during the first production number
- Never So Beautiful, Sung by Tony Martin
- Ya Got Class, Sung by Rosemary Clooney and Bob Hope
- It's Torment, Danced to by Inesita (brief flamenco, in man's clothing), Sung by Bob Hope, Arlene Dahl and chorus
- When You Love Someone, Sung by Rosemary Clooney
- Ali Baba (Be My Baby), Sung by Rosemary Clooney, Also danced to by The Four Step Brothers and Bob Hope
- Heavenly Days, Sung by Tony Martin
- See the Circus, Sung by Arlene Dahl and chorus
Enjoyable BH fluff, where RS is trying to kill him with a knife, even onstage during performances, because AD claims to love him, all to shield her true love TM.
BH dances up a storm here, in the first number and in Ali Baba. I'm impressed. Then again, the print is blurry, and the crew includes a specialty dance double; no photo to determine if he could have been BH's dance double. There certainly was a stunt on a bicycle that needed a double.
Loses a + on my rating because the plot is repetitive and we get (seemingly) long stretches between musical numbers.
Hope Enterprises, Paramount, dir. Binyon; 6
