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.

Sunday, May 29, 2022

LADY, LET'S DANCE (1944)

In 1943, with 20th/Fox pulling the plug on ice-skating phenom Sonja Henie, Poverty Row outfit Monogram Pictures quickly moved in, making SILVER SKATES with ‘Belita’ (née Maria Belita Jepson-Turner), a British-born polyglot fluent in ballroom dance, ballet & ice skating to fill the gap.*  Presumably doing well enough for this second helping, after which no more full blown musicals, though fast-fading Belita did make a few more films in her on-and-off career.  An earnest attempt on the cheap at this hardest of all genres, this tuner is more 20th/Fox celebrity showcase than M-G-M integrated musical narrative.  Our storyline: Belita loses touch with hard-nosed agent/manager/discoverer James Ellison who enlists as she climbs toward stardom.  A move that effectively drops everything but musical turns for acts two & three, leaving nothing but a series of showcase ‘Numbos’ for our fair-weather/fair-haired star to dance & skate her way to B’way stardom.  And if most of her routines come off as pretty routine in content & presentation, we do get a couple of chances to see comic skating legends Frick & Frack and, finally, a legit ‘11 o’clock Number’ for our star.  (It’s the title track with Belita consecutively and concurrently wooed by tuxedoed corps of dancers & skaters.)  Then, post-lovers’ reunion, a kitsch patriotic solo for Belita, skating her way thru a truncated arrangement of Beethoven’s Fifth, the one that opens with that ‘V for Victory’ musical tattoo.  We laugh at it now; heck, they laughed at it then.  Hence, no more Belita Musicals.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Belita followed with THE HUNTED/’48, a film noir with a professional ice skating background to set up her specialty number.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-hunted-1948.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Belita a somewhat full-figured beauty for ballet, but, man!, could she skate!

No comments: