Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

STEP LIVELY (1944)

Innocuous musical expansion of ROOM SERVICE, a one-room farce about a hustling producer fighting to keep his hotel room/office while he raises cash for a play. A big B’way hit under George Abbott in ‘36 with Eddie Albert, Sam Levene & Betty Field; converted into a so-so Marx Bros. vehicle in ‘38, now studded with a few tunes as Frank Sinatra’s second feature. The real leading role goes to George Murphy as the hassled play producer, while a wafer-thin Sinatra (positively swimming in a double-breasted suit*) plays the novice, but not so dumb playwright who winds up singing his way onto a B’way stage. Loud & fast when it means to be funny, its saving grace lies in a brace of pleasant, if not quite memorable Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn tunes. (Best are Sinatra’s ‘As Long as There’s Music’ and an off-the-wall Arabian Nights production ‘numbo’ for Murphy, ‘Ask the Madame.’) R.K.O.’s desperate tagline, ‘It’s Fun!,’ tells you all you need to know. (Presumably from the same R.K.O. publicity genius whose tagline for CITIZEN KANE was ‘It’s Terrific!’)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Sinatra skedaddled to M-G-M after this, co-starring with Gene Kelly in ANCHORS AWEIGH/’45, a big commercial hit that camouflaged his bag-of-bones bod in a spiffy sailor uniform and applied ‘symmetricals’ to give him the illusion of a tush.

No comments: