This typically brainless Rita Hayworth wartime musical plays better than most of her big Technicolor pics. Perhaps because she dances thru-out with such power & confidence and gets to look gorgeous² in some turn-of-the-century flashback numbers. She’s dancing at Gene Kelly’s Bkln nightspot when she’s discovered by a magazine editor & a big B’way producer. Will she stay true to Kelly & comic sidekick Phil Silvers? The Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin score is uneven, but with a number like ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ on tap, much can be forgiven. Silvers & Kelly make a swell comic act (see them in SUMMER STOCK/'50), but this is the film that really put Kelly over as a big star after a false start contracted to Selznick & two spotty years at M-G-M. Here, in a superbly mounted trick number he took charge of with a young Stanley Donen, he found his favorite partner, himself.
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