Movies

Lady Be Good (1941) stars Ann Sothern and Robert Young as a songwriting team with an off again on again marriage, providing an excuse for some excellent Gershwin brothers tunes to be played a bit too much. I grew up with Young on Father Knows Best but never cared much for him in serious roles - here he is just right as the knucklehead whose idiocy keeps estranging his longsuffering wife. I have been listening to Sothern's radio shows The Adventures of Maisie, and have seen the first of her Maisie series of films so am glad to see her as a different character. I would like to see her in something really serious to see how she handles it. (Note - on My Mother the Car, she played the car. It seems I have seen her in A Letter to Three Wives but that was quite a while ago and I don't remember a thing about it.) This is probably one of the last movies to feature divorce in such a light story as the soon-to-arrive war made marriage hideously sacred for the following twenty years. Busby Berkeley was intended to direct this but was retained only for the outstanding musical numbers - the extended Fascinating Rhythm number at the end is less elaborate than his earlier work but is as precise and dynamic as anything he ever did. There is a great musical montage with growing stacks of records, and sheet music flashing across store counters, and Sothern's rendition of The Last Time I Saw Paris, though it doesn't really fit into the story, is restrained and quite moving. The real mystery is how Eleanor Powell came to be top-billed on this in all the credits and publicity material. She is never anything but the Cheerful Chum (I just coined that the other day - pretty good, huh?) who connives to get the two actual leads back together and only appears in one major scene through the first 2/3 of the film. The good thing is that her two dance numbers, one spare and tight in an apartment - with a highly talented dancing dog! - and the other the socko Fascinating Rhythm number (along with the Berry brothers, a black tap trio not as flashy and sharp as the Nicholas brothers but with loads of pep) have all the dynamic qualities lacking in Born To Dance. The routines are exactly fitted in timing and dynamics to the music and are extremely impressive every moment, truly deserving of her reputation. She is very exciting to see, and really burns up the floor. It is a very good thing that she is kept a chirpy secondary character in an Iris Adrian/Una Merkel role and brought to the fore only to dance. The story itself is not super great and as I noted before some of the songs are overplayed but the production numbers are for the most part real killers and very much worth seeing. Red Skelton and novelty songstress Virginia O'Brien are shoehorned in for entertainment value, he mercifully brief but she sadly so. Comes in a two disc "Eleanor Powell" set with Born to Dance. 7/10