Movie review - "My Gal Sal" (1942) **1/2

American movies of the 1940s seemed obsessed with the 1890s - it must have seemed a time of good times, happy songs and smiles, or something. This is mostly set in that era, and is a composer biopic, a musical genre that was very popular at 20th Century Fox, normally starring John Payne or Don Ameche. Here they've got Victor Mature, who normally acted as a prop in musicals for the ladies rather than driving the action. He's not very well cast.

And instead of Betty Grable or Alice Faye there's Rita Hayworth, who - let's be honest - isn't much of an actor (look at the scene where Mature proposes to her on the ferris wheel - she's concentrating on her breathing and remembering her lines), but looks gorgeous in technicolour. At least her role has some meat - she's a singer who writes the lyrics to Mature's tunes. She and Mature have a bantering urst relationship you normally saw in these musicals but she and Mature seem to find each other genuinely attractive. (Mature's strength in as a male co-star was he often seemed to genuinely like his female co-stars... probably because he was usually sleeping with them in real life.) They agree to get married, she thinks he's cheated because of a misunderstanding, they get back together. There's a third wheel guy (wimpy John Sutton) who pines after the lead but is no real threat, plus some comic relief players (two here - Phil Silvers and James Gleason). It's very similar to Coney Island and such tales.

The composer was called Paul Dresser who in real life lost all his money, became obese and would trawl brothels. His brother was Theodore Dreiser who wrote the memoir on which this was based - so you've got a musical Theodore Dreiser adaptation!