Goofy little Home Front ‘War-Effort’ musical must have been planned as a major release before 20th/FOX saw the war finishing up and downsized to a 1'17" running time. Why else plump for TechniColor, top tech & producer William Perlberg? (Rodgers & Hammerstein’s STATE FAIR his other musical that year.) Why borrow Warners’ Joan Leslie; Paramount’s Fred MacMurray; and pay the price for B’way’s Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin just off the hugely successful LADY IN THE DARK (on stage ‘43/on film ‘44), with FIREBRAND OF FLORENCE currently running.* Overnight, why care if MacMurray can’t get past 4-F status & into uniform? Or that his scrap metal drive turns up a genie who gets him in the Army (George Washington’s!); on a naval ship (Christopher Columbus’s!); or into the Marines (with the WACS!). Morrie Ryskind, of many a Marx Bros. film, goes for non-sequitur laughs & earns the occasional chuckle, and the cast (other than Gene Sheldon’s overplayed genie) are perfectly pleasant; but it’s wan stuff. Or is except for one miraculous reel where Weill/Gershwin create a sort of mini-Gilbert & Sullivan operetta on the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, in one of the most melodic, rib-tickling, lunatic sung-thru sequences ever put on film. If only this scene weren’t such a lonely island of wisenheimer musical sophistication among also-ran material. So, in spite of reasonably solid production values and charming picture-book special effects, you’ll see why utilitarian director Gregory Ratoff was assigned to get it done . . . and get the hell out.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Alas, the film LADY IN THE DARK, while commercially successful, is a travesty of the stage show. (But check out the hilarious over-sized furniture in a psychiatrist’s office. Yikes!) Instead, here’s that Christopher Columbus number. (HINT: Tap the settings wheel to up the resolution.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDlBqCW3Z18 And Google away to find superb audio excepts of the magnificent, if doomed FIREBRAND OF FLORENCE, especially the opening number ‘Come to Florence (Civic Song).’
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