Norman Krasna’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on the credits for thus musical, to plot to which is more than a little reminiscent of his original story and screenplay, The Richest Girl in the World – which was made by RKO, the same studio as this. As in that film, the heroine (here Jane Russell) is incredibly rich and worried about men only wanting her for money and is dumped in the opening real by her fiancee (Craig Stevens) who has fallen in love with someone else. So she decides to pretend to be an employee of hers to find true love, despite the fact that said employee already has a husband. And when said employee hooks up with her husband it has repercussions for the main girl.
Another film ripped off is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: the action mostly takes place in a cross Atlantic cruise, Russell falls for a guy who’s been paid to trail an heiress (Gilbert Roland), Russell does a number with a female friend, it ends in Paris.
When the plot isn’t being derivative it’s just plain confusing, with Russell pretending to be one person, and Gilbert Roland looking after another person and thinking she’s another. The script misses the point of the best deception comedies – the impersonation is meant to lead to fun and games, hijinks, which doesn’t here. It gets complicated in a silly way. For instance, instead of just having Russell impersonate her good friend they have her impersonate an employee of her good friend – so you have this surplus character (the friend) and Rssell has no connection with the girl she’s impersonating.
Jane Russell is game, and performs in a few low cut outfits, but badly lacks someone decent to play against. Roland is a lousy romantic lead - he looks like a pimp and is far too old. Arthur Hunnicutt's Texan minder is incredibly annoying.
The credits read "Howard Hughes presents". Presumably his influence is to blame for all the pro-Texas lines of dialogue (Russell is a Texan), and large number of models and chorus girls who populate the film. (Someone once said that Hughes bought RKO to run it like a brothel - you'd believe it from this.)
No comments:
Post a Comment