Hit Parade of 1941 (1940)

I’ve seen countless Hollywood musicals, and any more it’s rare that I discover a film that I enjoy, or have even the slightest desire to write about. Such is the case, however, with the elusive Hit Parade of 1941. There have been numerous films to appear under the Hit Parade banner, and they have little in common with each other. The most well-known is the 1943 entry starring Susan Hayward — it’s available via Netflix streaming and is well worth a look — and just like the Hit Parade of 1941 it’s a double Academy Award nominee, in both the Song and Score categories.

Of course all of these films — just like the Broadway Melody series — are little more than cinematic fluff, but that rather goes without saying. Hit Parade of 1941 is nevertheless a charming and entertaining film that, excuse the horrible pun, hits all the right notes. It features radio star Kenny Baker, who I first encountered in the odd 1937 film Mr. Dodd Takes the Air. If you know Baker at all, it’s likely from his supporting role in the Garland’s The Harvey Girls. He had boyish good looks and a beautifully clear voice. The studios tended to use him in unsophisticated, innocent, aw-shucks parts, and Hit Parade is no different.

Baker plays David Farraday, who helps his zany uncle (Hugh Herbert) run a Connecticut trading post (or is it a swap shop? or maybe a flea market?) that advertises on WPX, a Brooklyn radio station. The station is floundering, so when the elder Farraday threatens to pull his sponsorship the station manager makes the trip to the suburbs hoping to convince him to hang on a little while longer. Yet somehow, Farraday pulls an impressive swap of his own, and trades the swap meet for the radio station! Both Farraday men easily transition to life as radio station owners, and quickly set their sights on the newly expanding world of television. (A 1940 film that embraces television? How Hollywood’s attitudes would change in the coming decade!) Longtime advertiser Mrs. Potter (character actress par excellence Mary Boland) is happy to sign on in support of WPX’s new television hour, but only if it features her niece Annabelle (Ann Miller). The problem is that, in spite of thousands of dollars in singing lessons, Annabelle can’t carry a tune. David has an idea: he asks singer and wannabe girlfriend Pat (Frances Langford) to dub Annabelle from a nearby sound booth. It works for a while, with predictable movie musical results. But fortunately for us all, Annabelle doesn’t want to sing anyway — we know what she wants to do…

Hit Parade of 1941 has what you are looking for: the comedy bits are actually funny, and the musical numbers are memorable. Baker and Langford make a good couple: solid chemistry and superb voices. Langford wasn’t exactly a minor star, but given her looks and talent it is somewhat surprising she wasn’t bigger. Although she only made two dozen or so films, mostly light musicals similar to this one, the “Sweetheart of the Fighting Fronts” was a staple of Bob Hope’s USO tours, an on the radio. In addition to Baker and Langford, Hit Parade gives us two more couples: Patsy Kelly and Phil Silvers, and Mary Boland pairs with Hugh Herbert. Top to bottom, it all works. One of the most entertaining musical acts in the film is, oddly enough, “Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals.” I know, I know, but trust me. If you can’t manage to locate this film, you can catch them in two pictures that are a little easier to find: 1942’s Always in My Heart with Kay Francis and Walter Huston, or in the 1936 Sonja Henie movie, One in a Million. These guys are worth it, fulfilling the same role as the Nicholas Brothers in numerous Fox pictures; they don’t contribute much to the story, but they punctuate it with something rather special.

The stars themselves do quite well too, but one musical sequence is truly spectacular. It finds Langford behind the microphone at a Manhattan nightclub, belting out “Swing Low, Sweet Rhythm,” while Ann Miller takes to the dance floor in an skimpy black get-up cadged from the cigarette girl. It’s a show-stopping treat of a number, offering the chance to see two beautiful young women doing what they do best. Langford is in great form, a full swing orchestra behind her — while Miller spins, sparkles, and taps her way across the floor — knowing no one in the world save Eleanor Powell could match her. It’s one of those moments that remind us why we like these films; it brims over with that special magic of the best forties musicals. You’ll stop what you are doing and pay close attention, hoping it will go on forever. But everything about these films, just like the months and years of that all-important decade — and the flickering images themselves — is fleeting. 

Hit Parade of 1941 (1940)
Directed by John Auer
Starring Kenny Baker, Frances Langford, Ann Miller, Patsy Kelly, and Phil Silvers.
Released by Republic Pictures
Running time 88 minutes.
Availability: Rare
Grade: A-

Where Love Has Gone (1964)

Put Susan Hayward and Bette Davis together and what more could you ask for than the spectacular, wacky trash that is 1964’s Where Love Has Gone — a pot-stirring film adaptation of the Harold Robbins novel, loosely based on the infamous Lana Turner / Johnny Stompanato case affair from the late fifties. A quick glance at the poster design tells you almost everything you need to know: there’s a lot going on and it’s all over the top — this is the Sirkian soaper of the fifties on steroids.

Hayward is at her best here: playing a San Francisco society girl with a classy veneer and mean streak — one that most often manifests itself in rather outrageous outbursts of infidelity. And in typical Hayward style, she’s self-righteous about all of her flaws — and no other actress (save possibly Davis herself, and maybe Elizabeth Taylor) could flavor her imperfections with such deliciously entertaining venom.

In addition to her blue blood, Hayward’s Valerie Hayden-Miller is also a sculptor of some notoriety. In one of the film’s many flashbacks, the story wades into the shallow pool of cliché in order to bring together Valerie and her future husband, war hero Luke Miller (Mike Connors). He’s back in the States (to receive the Medal of Honor, of course) for his exploits in the Pacific; and while taking in some culture he finds himself circling a sculpture at a posh Nob Hill art opening. He unwittingly tees off on the superficiality of the work and the ostentatious venue to the nearest bystander, who just so happens to be Valerie, the artist herself (of course) — happily at home in the upper crust. It’s a tired device we’ve seen in a thousand other films, but it serves well here to introduce our future husband and wife, and fundamentally outline their soon-to-be irreconcilable differences.

Before we know it they are wed, but with the war far from over Valerie has to slog out the early days of their marriage on the home front. We get some early insight into her character when one pal after another questions her ability to remain faithful while Mike is away island-hopping towards Japan. She manages to remain faithful, and life really begins for the Millers in those hedonistic days of 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Yet while she is productive in her studio, Luke fails to find work as an architect on his own merits. Soon he is obliged to take a job proffered up by Valerie’s overbearing mother (Bette Davis — dig all that makeup!) in the Hayden family firm (they already live in a swanky house, again proffered up by said mother-in-law).

As soon as Valerie becomes pregnant, the marriage begins to flounder. He starts drinking and she starts fooling around. By the time little Danielle enters the world he’s guzzling straight from the bottle and she’s making like the village bicycle. They quickly divorce, and Dani grows up not knowing her father, until that fateful day years later when he’s called away from a business meeting to find out that she, now a teenager (Joey Heatherton), has killed a man. And not just any man — her wanton mother’s latest lover!

The best thing about Where Love Has Gone is that it catapults toward excess in a way that few early sixties films even attempted. It’s sublimely trashy, and brought to life by a trio of women perfectly suited to make such a film utterly captivating. Not surprisingly, Heatherton draws the short straw here. She had been much, much better the year before as Nick Adams’s wife-prostitute in Twilight of Honor, but there she had been essentially the only woman in an almost all-male cast (riffing on Lee remick in Anatomy of a Murder). Here she gets swept away by the hurricane otherwise known as Susan Hayward. It’s decisively Hayward’s picture, and she’s comfortably inside her wheelhouse. Even Bette Davis stays out of her way. Davis’s performance is at times shallow: she defers to Hayward is their scenes together, almost convincing you that she’s just going through the motions in order to cash a check, until she gets screen time opposite Mike Connors, when she’s able to drop the shrill exterior and make us remember her extraordinary emotional range.

In the end, Where Love Has Gone isn’t a film that asks you to think, and that’s perfectly fine. Instead it’s garish nonsense, as loud and smelly as a passing city bus plastered with gaudy advertisements and unreadable graffiti — to be gaped at as is splashes up a street of countless potholes — get on board for a little while. Some of those potholes are patched with cliché, but most are simply ignored. Get off if you like, but Susan Hayward is there whispering (no, shouting) in your ear to stay on for one more stop and see what happens. And why not? You bought the ticket, ride it to the end of the line.

Where Love Has Gone (1964)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Reeased by Paramount Pictures
Starring Susan Hayward, Bette Davis, Mike Connors, and Joey Heatherton

Running tim: 111 minutes

Availability: Hard to find on DVD

Grade: B+ trash! 

Golden Girl (1951) and Les Girls (1957)

Mitzi Gaynor is a recent re-discovery for me, having never been a fan of South Pacific, which I saw once eons ago and promptly moved on from. I just watched a much younger Mitzi in 1951’s Golden Girl, and found something in her first featured performance quite endearing. The forgotten film casts Mitzi as Gold Rush honey Lotta Crabtree, making her name as a performer in the mining camps throughout California during the Civil War period. There’s not much to speak for Golden Girl beyond Gaynor — the songs aren’t memorable and the romance with a dashing southern spy / officer (TV Western star Dale Robertson) who robs Union payrolls feels dated and a little uncomfortable. The climax finds Gaynor bleating a tearful rendition of Dixie in a high-falootin’ San Francisco auditorium just as news of the surrender at Appomattox has made its way west. Golden Girl has never been released on DVD (or VHS?), and the print showing on Turner Classic Movies is so poor as to not bode well for its future. On a side note, the poster for Golden Girl is simply one of the most awful I’ve ever seen.

And then there’s Les Girls. If it were not for Mitzi, whose part is too small for my tastes, I would have liked it a great deal less. If you are a fan of MGM musicals however, Les Girls is available everywhere and is a film that you simply have to see, even if I say that in a somewhat weary, obligatory tone of voice (being a completist has its downside). The production values are as sumptuous and as artistic as anything else Metro did during the period — particularly in Mitzi’s big number towards the end of the film. (The film was an Oscar winner for its costumes.) The narrative gets a little tedious though: the story is centers around a London courtroom libel suit that finds two of Gene Kelly’s former troupers — Les Girls — at each others throats over a tell-all book one has just written. The same set of events are related three times, each time through the eyes of a different character, and before long we see way in which all the strings are going to tie neatly together.

In addition to Gaynor and Gene Kelly, the film casts lanky Brit Kay Kendall as the author of the tell-all, and sexy Finn Taina Elg as the libeled lady. Elg was certainly a stunner, but she never really caught on with American audiences, while Kendall had all the talent in the world yet never had a fighting chance to use it — she would succumb to leukemia two short years later, in 1959. While each of the girls brings something worthwhile to the film, they never quite gel on screen together in the way they do with their male costars, and the movie suffers a little for it.

The biggest drawback for me is that this is yet another late-cycle musical that fails to properly integrate the musical numbers into the story. As so often became the case as the fifties grew tired, the musical interludes show up like television commercial breaks — here in the form of the Les Girls nightclub acts, each one a little more artsy-fartsy and self indulgent than the last. (And don’t get me wrong either, I think An American in Paris is great stuff!) This is not a bad film by any means, but it is rather soul-less and clearly shows that the musical was running on fumes in 1957, and desperately needed the shot in the arm that West Side Story was stirring up on Broadway at the time, and would in a few years give the motion picture musical.

At almost 80, Mitzi is still out there somewhere, though her motion picture career was too damn short: eighteen credits, and no big screen work after 1963. She did a number of TV specials in the seventies, but they are nowhere to be found. It’s too bad, Gaynor had a look, style, and screen presence that doesn’t translate to photography — you’ve gotta see her in films.

Golden Girl (1951)

Directed by Lloyd Bacon

Starring Mitzi Gaynor, Dale Robertson, and Una Merkel

Released by Twentieth Century Fox

Running time: 108 minutes.

Availability: Has aired on TCM

Les Girls (1957)

Directed by George Cukor

Starring Mitzi Gaynor, Gene Kelly, Kay Kendall, and Taina Elg

Released by MGM

Running time: 114 minutes.

Availability: Widely on DVD, airs on TCM