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.

Rosalie (1937)

Fans of Eleanor Powell will wonder how she detoured into this Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy overblown costume piece — and in the role of Jeanette MacDonald no less! Whereas delicate Jeanette would have floated through this pageant with an air of fluttering dignity, pants-wearing Ellie delivers too much punch for a princess. She barks most of her lines and unfortunately comes off as a bitch. A more delicate actress would have softened the barrage of “womanly” insults laid on Nelson Eddy and we would know this meant she was smitten. But with the confidant and athletic Powell delivering the insults you really start to wonder if wooden Eddy is a masochist or just extremely submissive. It’s an electric energy that cost Powell her spotlight, and didn’t fit with MGM’s idea of what a feminine leading lady should be.

Those who are fascinated by Ellie’s unusual (at least on film) gender-play will be thrilled to see her “go all the way” and dress as a man to sneak into a military academy where she leads the cadets in a marching drill in front of a phallic war memorial. While Powell is hardly mannish (and here with Jeanette’s wardrobe and make-up budget she never looked prettier) the production plays with her “masculinity” and dresses her in all extremes of buttoned-downed marching band jackets and crisp uniforms, interspersed with overly feminine gowns with frou-frou puffy sleeves and Jeanette’s corkscrew curls. It’s an inconsistent and mostly unsuccessful gender dichotomy — especially when compared to her smart wardrobe play and winning charisma in the Broadway Melody films.

Her tap numbers are too few and too short — a Pieroette “ballet” on giant drums is an weird jumble of inconsistent imagery, and a brief scene with Ray Bolger makes you wish they’d shared a competitive dance of lightning legwork rather than the time-wasting dialog in the script. Other supporting players are also underused: as the Queen, Edna May Oliver appears briefly in a tiered nightgown that exaggerates her Olive Oil frame, and Frank Morgan does his best to keep the banter rolling as a befuddled monarch with a ventriloquist dummy, but there isn’t enough comedy here to entertain. A sudden accidental revolution in the tiny Balkan monarchy has potential, but is dropped just as quickly. Even the production numbers are too short, following the pattern of the other MacDonald/Eddy films where actual choreography and musical style are ignored for lots and lots of extras (1500 in one scene by some accounts) arranged in expensive costumes and plenty of operetta bombast from Eddy.

Some moments shine, including a stunning solo by Ilona Massey as a nouveau Queen of the Night: she descends a marble staircase followed by an admiring fawn. Nine original songs by Cole Porter include “I’ve a Strange New Rhythm in My Heart”, “Spring Love is in the Air”, “In the Still of the Night”, and “To Love or Not To Love”. An abrupt wedding finale is a lovely tiered cake of gowned women, candelabras, and cellophane drapes, but leaves you wondering what the hell happened.

Other than seeing Eleanor Powell in one of her few starring roles this is a forgettable film that shows no one to advantage, except possibly MGM’s costume department. I can see how this was originally a vehicle for Marion Davies because the sets are jaw-droppingly huge.

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1939)

She was trained in ballet and acrobatics, but Eleanor Powell actually didn’t like tap and thought it was ungraceful, hard to believe since she practically floated above the floor and had been named “world’s greatest tapper” at the age of 17. Legend has it that when she lost a few stage roles to dancers who could tap, she began training her lightning footwork with sandbags strapped to her waist to add weight to her statuesque frame. Competitive? You bet! The result was the strongest legs on Broadway and arguably the best dancer ever to grace Hollywood, male or female.
…more about Broadway Melody of 1940

Born to Dance (1936)

Remember the first time you had a Long Island Ice Tea? How it’s lethal mix of vodka, tequila, rum, gin, and triple sec — each a potent shot on its own, masked with the right amount of sour mix and soda goes down so easily that you’re asking for another before you realize you’ve been spiked?
…more about Born to Dance

Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)

Warner Bros had such a string of hits with the Gold Diggers movies they couldn’t get them out the door fast enough! MGM fired back with this reunion of hit-makers Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown who had won the Oscar in 1929 with Broadway Melody, the world’s first cinema musical. The Broadway Melody sequels steal shamelessly from Busby Berkeley’s genius, combining stage tricks and camera magic with eyepopping choreography and hummable tunes, but they differ in three important ways: you actually LIKE the characters in the MGM movies, the Gold Diggers musicals star Dick Powell — Melody features Eleanor Powell, and the Melodies take the even numbered years (’36, ‘38, 40) while the Gold Diggers take the odd (33, 35, 37).
…more about Broadway Melody of 1936