Movie review – “Sun Valley Serenade” (1941) ***

MGM have the reputation for producing the best musicals but for cheerful bright entertainments, 20th Century Fox were pretty sharp in the 1940s. They became especially skilled at creating star vehicles for their contract talent – Betty Grable, Alice Faye, Sonja Henie. This is probably Henie’s best known film, due mostly to the setting and the appearance in the support cast of Glen Miller and his band, the Nicholas Brothers and Dorothy Dandridge and Milton Berle. Not only that by Miller’s band plays ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘In the Mood’ and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’.

This has a bright central idea – John Payne, pianist for Miller’s orchestra, finds out that manager Milton Berle has gotten him to sponsor a war orphan… who turns out to be Sonja Henie. Then Henie instantly falls in love with Payne a la Daryl Hannah in Splash and the film becomes less fun. Well, the “book” section of it, that is – the musical numbers remain of a very high quality, with the Nicholas Brothers and Dandridge in particular taking your breath away. It’s a shame it isn’t in Technicolour but maybe that would have been difficult shooting in snow.

Back to the story – Henie’s chirpy little blonde is way too driven and selfish to be likeable. Why are we meant to hope that she winds up with Payne? When Payne asks Henie if she’s going to get a job she says no she just wants to look after a man (admittedly Payne only asks if she wants to work as a typist or something but he’s more of a feminist than or Sonja). Then she goes about wooing Payne by stalking him and knocking him over on the ski slopes – then contriving it so she and Payne spend some time together in a ski.

You can’t help feeling sympathy for Payne’s girlfriend, poor old singer Lyn Bari, who is meant to be a bitch – but she at least as a job. And she never does anything too terrible – okay yes she fires a few bands but at least that’s honest emotion, not like conniving little Sonja. And why’s it so bad she fires Miller’s band because Payne wants to go off with Sonja? Why’s that so much better than Miller and Berle happily getting the gig in the first place because Payne flirts with Bari.

You keep waiting for the writers to give Sonja a pat the dog moment, to be nice to another orphan or something, but they don’t. The only real thing Sonja and Payne seem to have in common is that they both like to ski. When Payne finally dumps Bari Sonja has this horrible little smug look of triumph on her pro-Nazi face.

But when all is said and done, it’s just the book. There is much fun to be had – Payne is handsome and engaging, Bari and Berle are fun, Miller is stiff (he has a few lines of dialogue) but his band is terrific, the setting is charming, the tunes are wonderful. Good fun.