Reviews by JxSxPx

Vincente Minnelli went on the record to state that I Dood It was his weakest effort as a director, and I’m not going to argue with him on it. I Dood It mostly spins its wheels around Red Skelton’s mugging for the camera, occasionally pausing from that action to view Eleanor Powell tap dancing up a tornado, before diverting into a third act plot twist that is improbable, unnecessary, and over before it even gets going. To summarize, this film is a huge mess.

Red Skelton is a presence that I don’t mind in smaller doses. Having just watched a large chunk of Esther Williams work, I can safely say that I prefer him as a supporting player like in Neptune’s Daughter than as a lead like in Bathing Beauty. When he’s given something funny to play, he can turn it into gold, but he typically just mugs to the camera, playing towards the balcony in the adjoining theater, and making various strained vocal noises. A film like Du Barry Was a Lady keeps him as a part of the ensemble, and his comedic styling plays better for me. I Dood It rest entirely upon your tolerance for Skelton.

For a Minnelli film, I Dood It doesn’t contain much of his typically lavish and grandiose filmmaking and production work. Hired as a last minute replacement to punch up the film, Minnelli’s touch seems entirely devoured apart from two sequences. The first comes from Eleanor Powell in the very beginning of the film, and involves her tap dancing and leaping through a succession of more difficult rodeo rope tricks. It’s an astonishing feat, and it’s a shot of adrenaline that the film quickly loses. The other dance sequences from Powell are entertaining, but many of them are spliced in from one of her older films.

The second noteworthy part is a sequence a little over an hour into the film in which Hazel Scott and Lena Horne show up to tear the roof off the joint. Scott arrives early with a large entourage in tow and performs a fabulous instrumental number for everyone’s enjoyment. She’s a sensational, sophisticated vision, revealing an attractive smile as she pounds on the keys with masterful precision and style. In addition, once Horne shows up, with some lines to spout (which she does fine with, landing her laugh) in full diva mode complete with a fur draped over her shoulders, it’s off and running.

Here is a chance to watch a massive ensemble of extremely talented and under-utilized black talent do what they do best. “Jericho” proves that Minnelli brought out the best in Horne out of all of her film collaborators thus far; making her diamond-in-the-rough qualities displayed in The Duke Is Tops shine their brightest. She looks fabulous, filmed with great tenderness and care, and she and Scott play off each other well. The film gets a massive dose of energy that it desperately needed, but it’s a pity that the moment the song ends that they’re shoved off and we’re back to Red Skelton mugging through a sleepy series of comedic set-ups. “Jericho” is one of the two sequences that make I Dood It worth watching, even if you’ll be fighting the urge to fast-forward through so much of it.

While it deserves a bit more credit and sense of historical importance than merely being the film debut of the luminous Lena Horne, it doesn’t deserve those things by much. It’s certainly not on the merits of its filmmaking or storytelling, the film’s B-movie origins and quick ten day shooting schedule are painfully obvious. No, The Duke Is Tops deserves a slightly better reputation because it sprang from the mind of Ralph Cooper and his independent production company, Million Dollar Productions.

Ralph Cooper would eventually go on to start Amateur Night at the Apollo, becoming the first emcee and possibly its longest running as he hosted the event from inception until just after a debilitating stroke. Cooper’s Million Dollar Productions specialized and focused on creating race films for the black film circuit. Million Dollar Productions was one of the first and major independent producers of black cinema, blazing the path for latter day movements like blaxploitation and artists like Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee, and Tyler Perry.

Yet The Duke Is Tops is a meager film, telling a mutation of A Star Is Born, only this time it provides its main characters with a happy ending. Cooper and Horne have tremendous star quality, but they’re in a youthful but rough form here. It would take the guiding hand of Vincente Minnelli in Cabin in the Sky to show what Horne was capable of as an actress, but her smile is magnetic and her musical numbers are all solid, if unremarkable.

The narrative is more to be endured than engaged with in The Duke Is Tops, while always keeping in mind that a new musical number is around the corner to delight. Granted, the shoestring budget means the scope and artistic ambition of these numbers has been compromised, but it’s still a chance to see little-known but supremely talented black entertainers strut their stuff. So while it may only be a middling movie, there’s some ambition behind it, some diamond-in-the-rough star power leading it, and enough musical numbers to more than recommend it (the medicine show, an appearance from The Cats and the Fiddle, and Horne’s “I Know You Remember” are all aces)

The Duke Is Tops has fallen into the public domain, and can be viewed on YouTube [Link removed - login to see].

Between 1952 and 1953, Esther Williams released three of her best films, Million Dollar Mermaid, Dangerous When Wet, and Easy to Love, which would also be the last great starring role for her. After this, her charm fizzled, but she made sure Easy to Love hit you with a bang.

A more complicated plot than most of her films, Easy to Love sees Williams being romanced by Van Johnson, Tony Martin, and John Bromfield. Add in a story that sees her as the star of an aquatic spectacle in Florida’s Cypress Gardens, and Williams being given the chance to play something other than “wholesome,” and you’ve got the makings of a top-notch entry in her filmography.

What really sells the film as one of the better variations on her formula is the ending, once again choreographed by Busby Berkeley. This time, it’s a stunt-heavy sequence which sees Williams leading the charge on water skis. Still demonstrating tremendous grace and poise in addition to her athleticism, this is a nice variation on her normal water ballets. Instead of a chorus of back-up swimmers (dancers?) creating swirling patterns for Williams to dive in and out of, we find her leading the charge in one of her most grandiose, eccentric, and enthralling numbers yet.

Normally a bit of a doormat in her movies, a nasty sign of the times has Williams continuously finding herself in love triangles in which she mindlessly gets passed back and forth, the recipient of the action instead of an active participant. A scene where she gets drunk and takes it out on Johnson is particularly pleasing, it’s nice to see Williams finally gain some agency and snap back.

Throw in some musical numbers from Tony Martin, John Bromfield’s beefy, hunky body on display (he and Williams engage in a particularly erotic and strange flirtation in a pool of floating flowers), and the numerous aquatic spectacles, and what you have here is distillation of brash movie making at its finest. This is pure escapism, in which the plot is the thin connective tissue between the big-bang-for-your-buck entertainments. It works like gangbusters, it is silly nonsense, but it’s gloriously silly nonsense.

Terms like “pleasant” and “slight” come up a lot when discussing the work of Esther Williams, but they’re the best words to describe her films. No great shakes in directing, writing, or even performing, her films were still wildly enjoyable, even hypnotic in their own strange way. When she was given a role tailored to her strengths, she brought a certain appeal that no one else had in Hollywood, before or since.

Dangerous When Wet plays well within her range, seeing Williams play a spunky, bright farm girl in a health-obsessed family who swims the English Channel to win money for the family farm. What was with MGM constantly having its various musical stars putting on shows to save the family farm? Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland practically had that market cornered in their various Babes films. Williams’ entry is another great star vehicle for her, and one of her best films.

Being one of her best films doesn’t mean it’s not without its share of problems. While she creates a believable erotic chemistry with Fernando Lamas, they would be married sixteen years later, they aren’t given a lot to do besides look attractive, flirt, and swim. This is fine, no really, as it keeps Williams in the water. The script itself is paint-by-numbers in every aspect, and Williams has found her groove as an actress in playing these bits.

And Dangerous When Wet has one of her all-time greatest sequences, a dream in which she finds herself swimming alongside Tom and Jerry in a cartoon undersea wonderland of singing octopi and kooky comedic bits. Granted, Anchors Aweigh did this first, but Tom and Jerry were the major in-house MGM cartoon creations, so seeing them again is highly enjoyable and whimsical. Whimsical and enjoyable are the best descriptors of this film as a whole, with a solid score, amiable supporting cast, Dangerous When Wet is tremendous fun, and one of the better films from its star.

Dropping the comedy in favor of drama, Million Dollar Mermaid might be the perfect fusion of elements to best explain Esther Williams’ star appeal. Using the life of Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman as a loose frame, Million Dollar Mermaid lets Williams act well within her range, provides her a top-notch supporting cast, and gives her a series of spellbinding, daring, and iconic water ballets to perform. Granted, at times the pacing can drag a little, but Williams finally seems to have found her footing as an actress, and MGM has found the perfect balance in her winning formula.

It helps that Million Dollar Mermaid actually has a big-name director, Mervyn LeRoy, unlike so many of her films which were directed by second and third-string journeymen at the studio. In addition to LeRoy, Busby Berkeley staged the various water ballets, which would explain why they’re more elaborate, ambitious, and ornate this time around. Each segment finds Berkeley’s geometric shapes swirling around the star as she leaps, drops, and rises out of the pool into the center of these patterns. No more impeccable an image of the surreal charms of Williams’ film can be found than a sequence which sees her rising on a platform adorned with sparklers in the middle of a pool.

Berkeley and Williams were a match made in cinematic heaven. By her own admission, she wasn’t given the directors or material to stretch or enable her capabilities as an actress, but she was smart enough to know that her charms and talents were entirely based on her athleticism and pin-up looks. Million Dollar Mermaid is worth viewing simply for the numerous scenes of Williams floating through the water. The “Fountain and Smoke” scene may just be the greatest number in all of Williams’ oeuvre.

No one goes into a Williams film for the dramatics, and Million Dollar Mermaid features its fair share of terrible dialog and inert action. The love stories in her films depended a lot on the men in her films, Red Skelton was never a believable romantic interest, Ricardo Montalban, Van Johnson, and Fernando Lamas were much better choices. Victor Mature livens things up, and Williams is clearly enjoying feeding off of his energy, but the film sidelines him for too long during the second act. His absence punctures a hole in the film, and it makes up for this by throwing a large series of aquatic numbers at us, not a bad choice to be honest. Walter Pidgeon and Williams create a sweet bit of father-daughter chemistry that is plausible enough, and it’s nice to see her surrounded by sympathetic co-stars.

Neptune’s Daughter was the first time I noticed that Williams’ combination of beauty and strength being given the proper tools to flower on film, Million Dollar Mermaid sees that blossoming continue. It would reach its apex in later films, but no other film would so perfectly encapsulate what made Esther Williams a movie star. Nor would any other film top the artistry and beauty of these water ballets. Million Dollar Mermaid may not be a great classic, no film of hers truly is, but it’s a dynamite bit of movie star myth-making.

The worst Esther Williams films make the mistake of keeping her out of the water for far too long, and Duchess of Idaho makes that major mistake. Aside from the opening and closing sequences, Williams is kept out of the pool, instead she spends a lot of time in a ski-lodge stuck in a love triangle with Van Johnson (her frequent co-star) and John Lund. This is formulaic to point where, in Williams own words; it becomes “cinematic déjà vu.”

The story sees Williams seducing her best friend’s boss (John Lund) in order to get him to go running to her friend’s (Paula Raymond) waiting embrace, along the way Williams runs into Johnson, and the already complicated love entanglements get even knottier. The needlessly convoluted charades are hard to take seriously when it’s delivered in such a ho-hum style. Not to mention that Williams isn’t playing to her strengths here. Playing a plucky, upbeat sweetheart is where Williams shines, and this isn’t exactly playing to her personality type. Later films would explore a feistier side to Williams, one that was immensely appealing, and a little more of that would have gone a long way here.

Where Duchess of Idaho excels in its final form is in the cutaway numbers. The opening and closing water ballets aren’t at the level of Million Dollar Mermaid, Neptune’s Daughter, or Dangerous When Wet, but they’re just as good as those found in On an Island with You or Ziegfeld Follies. Also worth a look are the two musical interludes by the guest performers, one a quick-footed tap dance by Eleanor Powell, and the other has Lena Horne performing “Baby Come Out of the Clouds.” Johnson also delivers some solid musical numbers, but the best has to be his duet with Connie Haines and the Jubilaires on “Let’s Choo Choo to Idaho.”

Duchess of Idaho is pure formula, delivered as middling as it sounds, but modestly charming. Not the worst of the Williams vehicles, that is probably Easy to Wed, but definitely only of interest to her super-fans. Duchess of Idaho would have worked much better as a one-off episode for a sitcom, or maybe as a thirty minute short film. In her scenes with Van Johnson, Duchess of Idaho reveals what could have been a genial, light-weight musical comedy if most of the fat had been trimmed.

Here we go, here is a fast-paced vehicle for Esther Williams that keeps her in the water, gives her plenty to do within her modest range, and gives us a successful, highly entertaining series of musical and comedy interludes to distract from the thin plot. Neptune’s Daughter may just be the best starring vehicle for Williams’ charms as a movie personality.

Williams plays a bathing-suit designer, and occasional model, while Red Skelton, a frequent co-star, plays a masseur at a fancy polo club who poses as a Latin lothario (Ricardo Montalban) to seduce Williams’ sister (Betty Garrett), while Montalban takes a shine to Williams and tries to romance her. The romance gets complicated, but the film is never anything less than charming.

The movie never slows down long enough to let the sheer absurdity of the plot machinations get too much focus. It’s nice to see Williams and Skelton share the screen again, but she never had believable romantic chemistry with him. They play off of each other well as a comedic duo, she as the straight man and he as the madcap jokester. Skelton and Betty Garrett have a fun, kooky romantic pairing, with Garrett as the romantic and sexual aggressor.

Montalban, practically a walking/talking definition of elegance and sophistication, is incredibly handsome here, he keeps up with Williams in the pool, and spins her around in some romantic dance routines as well. Montalban and Williams create believable chemistry together, and their performance of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is a slow-burning seduction (the immediate reprise by Skelton/Garrett switches the genders and plays it for laughs with Garrett becoming the aggressive seductress).

Neptune’s Daughter may not be a classic musical comedy, but it takes the best parts of a typical Esther Williams movie, and does them all incredibly well. It keeps her in the pool, gives her a plausible romance to play out, some fun supporting players, and great musical/comedy bits. Not to mention the sight of Montalban dripping wet in a Tarzan-like loincloth in the grand finale is as memorable an image as that of Williams and her back-up swimmers revealing their supple flesh in tightly choreographed synchronized swimming sequences.

Typical vehicles for Esther Williams had the swimming sensation standing around and smiling, waiting for her chance to take another dip in the pool. Surrounding her were vaudevillian sketch comedy, musical interludes, and lukewarm romantic triangles. The formula worked to varying degrees of success, and it’s just bizarre that Easy to Wed would be chosen as a starring role for Williams, there’s hardly any of that formula in sight.

No, Easy to Wed is a remake of the star-studded screwball comedy Libeled Lady. While Williams could be charming in softball comedy routines, playing verbal sparring matches as an extended flirtation was above her acting range. I didn’t find the original Libeled Lady to be particularly great on the merits of its script or direction, but it was a great excuse to watch William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, and Jean Harlow, the real standout of that film, engage in verbal sparring and moments of physical comedy.

Easy to Wed trades out that megawatt cast for Williams in the Loy role, Van Johnson in for Powell, Keenan Wynn in for Tracy, and Lucille Ball in for Harlow. Williams was always better playing spunky, can-do girls-next-door, and she’s out of her depth trying to play a haughty society girl. Same thing goes for Johnson, who was spectacularly charming as a song-and-dance man and had surprising range in his later dramatic roles, but a razor sharp and dry wit he was not. It’s not their fault they’re miscast, and they do try their best.

Wynn and Ball easily steal the film. Wynn picks up much of the slack and finds the right verbal rhythm for the dialog that the two leads lack, but it is Ball who provides the essential performance in this film. She’s in great form, demonstrating many of the comedic chops which would blossom even further in just a few years on I Love Lucy. A scene in which she drunkenly recites Shakespeare is an absolute standout.

The main problem with Easy to Wed is that the script is too convoluted for the Williams formula to shine through. Much like Libeled Lady, even for a screwball comedy that is a plot-heavy story, and at 110 minutes the thinness of the material becomes more apparent. There are meek charms to be found in Easy to Wed, but they only come from Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn, fans of the Johnson and Williams need look elsewhere for better vehicles that displayed their talents.

Like many of Stanley Kramer’s film, The Men is a solidly built bit of moralizing, a “message movie” that marries dramatic form to topicality. Sometimes these films felt less like coherently constructed narrative films than long sermons, occasionally more than a little self-righteous (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is the worst for this liberal back-patting, and I’m a huge liberal). Kramer’s films have a distinct call-to-arms, many flaws, but they’re also really well made and typically feature actors giving great performances.

The same is mostly true for The Men. It places the focus a bit too hard on quietly noble suffering, treating some of the deeper intensity or fury of the men with child-ish gloves. The Men features Marlon Brando’s first feature film performance, and director Fred Zinnerman gets a typical daring, moving performance from him. One gets a sense that Zinnerman and Brando were trying to make a darker film, but smothered by Kramer’s relentless hopefulness.

Another major problem with The Men is how badly it treats its minimal female characters. Teresa Wright essays the long-suffering girlfriend, a character with no agency or interior life, existing only to inspire Brando to get his life back on track and aid his recovery. Much of the supporting cast exists in a similar manner. Arthur Jurado, an impossibly charismatic and handsome real-life paraplegic veteran, is an eternal optimist who exists to facilitate Brando’s change before exiting. And Everett Sloane’s Dr. Brock exists mainly to explain to the characters, but mostly the audience, what being a paraplegic is, the various conditions of the men, and a strange obsession with their bowel movements. Was this necessary? Maybe, but it’s tedious to get through, and Sloane indulges in his worst hammy eccentricities throughout. The rest of the men, aside from Jurado, don’t make much of an impression, but offer a variety of colorful characters and voices in the ward.

While The Men may deserve a better reputation than being a trivia question about its star, it’s not an impeachable classic. It’s a handsomely made film about this subject matter and well-acted, but too flawed to really stick out as something of deeper value. It’s good, not great, but worth a look if you can accept its flaws and meet it halfway. Brando’s run in the 50s really was something quite extraordinary, wasn’t it?

This 1935 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel jettisons much of the supporting players and extended sub-plots to zero in on the complex battle of wills between Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean. This gives two actors a chance to strut their stuff, even if it does leave the film with a sense of being incomplete.

The production values are high in this film though. And it is money well spent, everything looks positively gorgeous. Cinematographer Gregg Toland flexes all of his muscle in this film, not in a way that is needlessly show-offy, but one that strengthens the emotions going on underneath the story and creates a series of beautiful images to get lost in. But Toland is only one-third of the triad that makes this version of Les Miserables so successful.

The other two belong to leading actors Fredric March and Charles Laughton. Granted, Valjean is a bit of a saintly man-on-the-run if not played correctly, but March won two Oscars and several Tonys during his lifetime for a reason. He makes his Valjean feel desperate at times, even searing with barely concealed rage, finding the right moments to underplay and hit us with the devastating twists and turns of the story. As for Laughton, was there a better actor at playing immensely watchable villains during the 1930s? Laughton’s impertinent baby-face could easily be read in different forms of theatrical villainy, from the sexual other in Island of Lost Souls to his mad Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, and here he makes the obsession of Javert understandable, even occasionally sympathetic.

And so much of the success of Les Miserables can be squarely placed on their shoulders. No other actor makes much of an impression, frankly, none of them have a chance. Fantine is barely a cameo, Cosette is a plot device and not a character, Eponine and Marius show up, but that’s about all that can be said for them. So much of the story has been removed to focus on the surface level cat-and-mouse game between the two leading men. It’s a quick skimming of the material, missing out on the deeper resonances and world-building of Hugo’s novel. As Hugo it’s terrible, but as an independent entity, it’s a pretty solid prestige film from the 30s with two fantastic leading performances and gorgeous cinematography.