Sensations of 1945 (1944)

Eleanore Powell is a Broadway star who creates a sensation with a series of dangerous publicity stunts. Whether faking her own murder attempt, or putting a circus tent atop a skyscraper, or stopping traffic in Times Square, her irresponsible media-lust is putting people in danger and landing her in jail. It’s up to sweet lug Dennis O’Keefe to show her that free publicity doesn’t have to mean someone gets hurt!

Since there’s not much focus on plot stringing together stunts and show numbers, Sensations takes on a Follies-quality even inviting Ziegfeld alum Sophie Tucker and WC Fields to churn the embers of vaudeville one last time. Tucker does it with grace; Fields falls flat on his face. Cab Calloway, Woody Herman, and Les Paul each deliver flashy music videos conducting their big bands, and plenty of lovely athletic showgirls, and a dozen specialty acts and trick photography bring back the silver age of MGM’s more imaginative musicals of the 1930s.

Powell seems a frenzy of re-invention almost a decade after her Broadway Melody debut she opens with a hectic jitterbug number that moves so fast she can barely be recognized. This is the notorious film where she tap dances in a giant pinball machine — as the pinball! And her dance partner in the finale is a horse, no really, a dancing horse. I can’t make this stuff up. Sensations would turn out to be Powell’s last starring role, but certainly not from a lack of ideas.