Donald Kerr Movies

Universal's yearly quota of cheap, 60-minute musicals occasionally yielded such likeable diversions as South of Dixie. David Bruce stars as Danny, a popular composer of southern ballads. Striking while the iron is hot, Danny's partner Brains (Jerome Cowan) promotes a filmed biography of the southern-fried songsmith. Trouble is, Danny is a fraud-he was born in the North, with nary a relative below the Mason-Dixon line to his name. Anxiously, Brains "invents" a southern lineage for Danny, going so far as to hire a voice tutor named Dixie (Anne Gwynne) and to cook up a romance between the hero and the daughter (Ella Mae Morse) of Southern colonel Morgan (Samuel S. Hinds). Inevitably, South of Dixie features several black performers in stereotypical roles, including Louise Beavers and Mantan Moreland. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical romance, a young couple is still in love, but find themselves facing insurmountable turmoil in their relationship. They separate and head for Vegas for a quickie divorce. The wife is counseled by another that to save the union, she must make her husband jealous. She does, romantic mayhem ensues, and in the end, they reunite to form a rock-solid, happy marriage. Songs include: "A Dream Ago," "Moon over Las Vegas," "Faithful Flo," "So Goodnight," "A Touch of Texas," "You Marvelous You," "Oklahoma's One with Me," and "My Blue Heaven." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Although coming in at an odd running time -- 40 minutes -- this interesting, low-budget drama looks at the adventures, or rather misadventures of a sailor (Paul von Schreiber) with a weekend leave in Los Angeles. The seaman is a country boy unused to the ways of big city women and so he gets his first shock when he picks up a comely lass and takes off with her for a few drinks together -- only to have her deliver a fanatical religious diatribe to the bar's customers. The second shock comes when a woman from a dance hall captures his fancy, then demands a ten-spot for the time she has spent with him. After the city, the ship may look pretty good. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Substantially, Lupe Velez' Columbia vehicle Redhead from Manhattan was the same as her previous RKO starrers-boisterous, unsubtle, and immensely profitable. La Lupe plays a dual role, as twin sisters named Rita and Elaine. Escaping from a torpedoed ship, Rita shows up in New York, where she takes the place of her Broadway-star sister Elaine, who's having problems with her marriage and needs to make a short but quick getaway. Naturally, neither Elaine's husband (Gerald Mohr) nor Rita's saxophone-player boyfriend (Michael Duane) are aware of the switch. Anyone who can't figure out what happens next should be drummed out of the theater in disgrace. And as always, a little of Lupe Velez goes a long, long way. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this tuneful comedy, a would-be actor and playwright is deeply in debt, and to keep away from his creditors, begins pretending to be his aged uncle. Unfortunately he ends up getting hit by a limousine. The rich woman inside takes the wounded "codger" home to her manhungry old aunt. The actor uses the old woman's desire to con her into financing his "nephew's" play. Things are going well until the actor's real uncle appears. Mayhem and a double wedding ensue. Songs include: "St. Louis Blues" (W.C. Handy, sung by the Delta Rhythm Boys), "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" (Duke Ellington, Bob Russell, sung by the Delta Rhythm Boys), "Liza" (George Gershwin, sung by the Tailor Maids), "That's the Way It Goes" (Milton Rosen, Everett Carter, sung by Mary O'Brien), "You're Driving Me Crazy" (sung by Jan Garber and his Orchestra), "Dark Eyes" (sung by Mary O'Brien, with Jack Teagarden and His Orchestra). Other songs were penned by Walter Donaldson and W.C. Handy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

According to this exuberant Paramount musical, famed pre-Civil War minstrel performer Daniel Decatur Emmett looked and sounded exactly like Bing Crosby! Very loosely based on the real Emmett's life and career, the film is essentially an excuse for an unending stream of Southern-fried ballads and boisterous blackface production numbers. The best scenes involve Emmet's creation of the minstrel tradition, helped along by Billy De Wolfe as the original "Mr. Bones." As Emmet's sweetheart Millie Cook, Dorothy Lamour has less to do than fourth-billed Marjorie Reynolds as Jean Mason, the physically challenged girl whom Emmet ultimately marries. In the midst of several old-time musical numbers, Bing Crosby introduces one of his lasting hits, "Sunday, Monday and Always". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Handed the exploitive title Cat People, RKO producer Val Lewton opted for a thinking man's thriller--a psychological mood piece, more reliant on suspense and suggestion than overt "scare stuff". Simone Simon plays an enigmatic young fashion artist who is curiously affected by the panther cage at the central park zoo. She falls in love with handsome Kent Smith, but loses him to Jane Randolph. After a chance confrontation with a bizarre stranger at a restaurant, Simon becomes obsessed with the notion that she's a Cat Woman--a member of an ancient Serbian tribe that metamorphoses into panthers whenever aroused by jealousy. She begins stalking her rival Randolph, terrifying the latter in the film's most memorable scene, set in an indoor swimming pool at midnight. Psychiatrist Tom Conway scoffs at the Cat Woman legend--until he recoils in horror after kissing Simon. If the film's main set looks familiar, it is because it was built for Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (Lewton later used the same set for his The Seventh Victim). Cat People was remade by director Paul Schrader in 1982. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Unable to convince their isolationist New York editor (Charles Dingle) that America must be alerted to the threat of encroaching Nazism, pugnacious war correspondents Johnny and Kirk Davis (Clark Gable and Robert Sterling) are relieved of their European assignments. Back in the USA, Johnny inagurates a rogueish flirtation with Paula Lane (Lana Turner), an aspiring reporter who has harbored a long-standing crush on Johnny. Even so, Paula enters into a romantic relationship with Kirk, prompting Johnny to break up the affair-for Kirk's own good, of course. Paula's hopes for a lasting romance with Johnny are crushed when he refuses to discourage her from accepting an assignment in IndoChina. Later on, both Johnny and Kirk are sent off to cover the war in the Far East, where they are reunited with Paula, now busily shepherding Chinese war orphans to safety. The action moves to Bataan, where Kirk is killed in service of his country, leaving Johnny to write a passionate tribute to his brother-and, by extention, everyone else who has lain down his or her life for the cause of Democracy. During production of Somewhere I'll Find You, Clark Gable's actress-wife Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash while participating in a war-loan drive; the impact of the tragedy is painfully obvious in Gable's performance, which becomes abruptly less playful and more somber in the final reels. New MGM recruits Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn make impressive appearances in uncredited roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy set during WW II, a circus aerialist desires to be closer to her lover, a soldier. When she finds herself chased by gangsters, the woman dresses up as a man and joins the military. Mayhem ensues as she tries to undergo training and keep her sex a secret. The secret is revealed at the end, when the camp puts on a show and the gangsters suddenly appear. Luckily the police arrive at the same time and justice prevails. Songs include: "In the Army," "Need I Speak," "Jitterbug's Lullaby," "Spangles on My Tights," "Wacky for Khaki" (Frank Loesser, Harold Spina), "Swing in Line" (Loesser, Joseph J. Lilley), "Love in Bloom" (Ralph Rainger, Leo Robin), and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" (Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Several popular radio personalities converge in the RKO Radio "comedy salad" Look Who's Laughing. Taking a vacation from his radio series, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen sets out in his private plane, accompanied by his dummy Charlie McCarthy. Developing engine trouble, Bergen makes a forced landing in the town of Wistful Vista, home of Fibber McGee and Molly (Jim and Marian Jordan). Here he gets mixed up in a municipal dispute between Fibber and Throckmorton Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) over the impending construction of a local aircraft factory. Before the film's multitude of complications can be straightened out, Fibber and Molly find themselves aloft in a runaway plane, while Charlie McCarthy falls in love with a squeaky-voiced little girl (who turns out to be Molly in disguise). Best scene: A disconsolate Charlie getting "wasted" on ice-cream sodas while counterman Sterling Holloway looks on sympathetically. Lucille Ball is largely wasted as Bergen's secretary, while Fibber McGee and Molly's radio announcer Harlow Wilcox shows up in a character bit. A box-office bonanza, Look Who's Laughing spawned an abundance of future screen assignments for Bergen, McCarthy, Fibber, Molly, and "Gildersleeve." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This campy, entertaining cheapie from PRC Pictures features Bela Lugosi as a chemist who plots an elaborate revenge scheme on his business partners, whom he feels have cheated him out of his share. To this end he develops a mutant breed of vicious, oversized bats and trains several of this breed to home in on a special chemical which he then blends with shaving lotion. Presenting gifts of the lotion to his partners as a peace offering (and browbeating them into splashing it on themselves while in his presence), he subsequently unleashes his monstrous pets to tear them to pieces. Believe it or not, this was one of PRC's more successful horror programmers, spawning a the sequel Devil Bat's Daughter. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

The Irving Berlin-Morrie Ryskind Broadway musical hit Louisiana Purchase came to the screen with surprisingly few emendations in 1941. Bob Hope replaces Broadway's William Gaxton in the role of innocent political flunkey Jim Taylor, set up to take the fall for wholesale graft by a group of corrupt Louisiana politicians. Taylor's friendly adversary is bumptuous U.S. senator Loganberry (Victor Moore, repeating his stage role), whose efforts at reform only end up getting him in hot water as well. Loganberry solves his own problems by marrying Mme. Bordelaise (Irene Bordoni), the temptress who'd been sent out to place him in a compromising position, forcing Taylor to straighten out the mess himself in a hilarious climactic courtroom filibuster. ("If it's good enough for James Stewart, it's good enough for me.") Some of the satirical bite of the Broadway version had to be blunted for movie-audience consumption, though Paramount managed to avoid potential lawsuits by using a device which originated in the play: an amusing opening "opera bouffe" wherein it was established beyond all doubt that Louisiana was a totally mythical state! (At one point, a bevy of chorus girls sing the "any resemblance to actual persons living or dead" disclaimer.) On a historical note, Louisiana Purchase was Bob Hope's first Technicolor appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though he doesn't speak his first line of dialogue until the film's final ten minutes, Peter Lorre spiritually dominates the fascinating RKO melodrama Stranger on the Third Floor. The plotline is carried by John McGuire, playing Ward, a newspaper reporter whose courtroom testimony sends the hapless Briggs (Elisha Cook Jr). to the death house. Ward is certain that he saw Briggs leaving the scene of a murder, but as the days pass, he is tortured by guilt and doubt -- especially during the film's surrealistic knockout of a nightmare sequence. When another murder is committed, Ward finds himself as much a victim of circumstantial evidence as the unfortunate Briggs. The reporter's girlfriend (Margaret Tallichet) tries to clear Ward....and that's when she first makes the acquaintance of Lorre, who is heard ordering a pound of raw meat! Stranger on the Third Floor was a "film noir" long prior to the genesis of that cinematic movement. Long ignored or trivialized by film historians, this 7-reel quickie has in recent years graduated to classic status. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide