Ginny Simms Movies

This film contains the one and only cinematic group appearance by Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi. Essentially a vehicle for bandleader Kay Kyser and his orchestra, the film finds Kyser hired to perform at the 21st birthday party of heiress Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish), the sweetheart of Kay's business manager Chuck Deems (Dennis O'Keefe). The party is held at Janis' family mansion, a spooky old joint dominated by astrology-happy Aunt Margo (Alma Kruger). Among the guests stranded in the mansion by inclement weather are mysterious mystic Prince Sallano (Bela Lugosi), family attorney Judge Mainwaring (Boris Karloff) and Professor Fenninger (Peter Lorre). Though advertised as a "mystery", the film throws the whodunit angle out the window at midway point by revealing that Saliano, Mainwaring and Fenninger are in cahoots, planning to kill Janis to get their hands on her inheritance. These sinister goings-on do not impede Kyser's ability to stage several musical numbers, including "The Bad Humor Man", which, according to studio publicity, was supposed to have been performed by Karloff, Lorre and Lugosi. Once the plot is resolved, Kyser utilizes several of Saliano's props-including the then-new "Sonovox" machine and an electronic zapping device-on his radio program, that leads to a closing gag. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Victor Mature and Lucille Ball top the star-studded cast of RKO Radio's Seven Days Leave. Mature plays Johnny Grey, an eternally smiling GI who suddenly falls heir to $100,000. There's just one catch: Johnny must marry heiress Terry (Ball), whom he's never met, within a seven-day period. Once this familiar premise has been set up, the film segues into an unending parade of supporting comedians and specialty performers, including Harold Peary (in his traditional "Great Gildersleeve" radio persona), Ralph Edwards (shown hosting his popular airwaves quizzer Truth or Consequences), announcer Charles Victor (likewise emceeing his Court of Missing Heirs radio program), singers Ginny Simms and Marcy McGuire, south-of-the-border entertainer Mapy Cortes, and bandleaders Freddy Martin and Les Brown. Also on tap are a brace of future TV favorites, Peter Lynd Hayes and Arnold Stang. The choreography is by director-to-be Charles Walters, making his Hollywood debut. Seven Days Leave should not be confused with the 1944 RKO Radio "B" Seven Days Ashore. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this '40s film Kay Kyser parades an entertainment group all over the globe providing laughs for the boys in battle. This film realistically portrays the role of the USO during the WW II time period. ~ Rovi

The plot of the overinflated MGM musical Broadway Rhythm can be summed up briefly: Musical comedy producer Jonnie Demming (George Murphy) dismisses his vaudevillian dad Sam Demming (Charles Winninger) as old-fashioned. Jonnie signs Hollywood star Helen Hoyt (Ginny Simms) to a Broadway show, but she turns it down. Sam saves the day by dredging up an old script he'd done in summer stock-which, of course, Helen agrees to play. All of this can be forgotten, and in fact will be forgotten, once the film's parade of "guest stars" gets under way. Such stage and screen luminaries as Lena Horne, Ben Blue, Nancy Walker, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Hazel Scott and Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra make up for the narrative banalities with such musical numbers as Gershwin's "Somebody Loves Me" and Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the Porter biopic Night and Day was released, the three-person scriptwriting team still hadn't come up with a compelling storyline, though the film had the decided advantages of star Cary Grant and all that great Porter music. Roughly covering the years 1912 to 1946, the story begins during Porter's undergraduate days at Yale University, where he participated in amateur theatricals under the tutelage of waspish professor Monty Woolley (who plays himself). Though Porter's inherited wealth could have kept him out of WWI, he insists upon signing up as an ambulance driver. While serving in France, he meets nurse Linda Lee (Alexis Smith), who will later become his wife. Focusing his attentions on Broadway and the London stage in the postwar years, Porter pens an unbroken string of hit songs, including "Just One of Those Things," "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin the Beguine," and the title number. The composition of this last-named song is one of the film's giddy highlights, as Porter, inspired by the "drip drip drip" of an outsized rainstorm, runs to the piano and cries "I think I've got it!" The film's dramatic conflict arises when Porter is crippled for life in a polo accident. Refusing to have his legs amputated, he makes an inspiring comeback, even prompting a WWI amputee to remark upon his courage! Corny and unreliable as biography, Night and Day is redeemed by the guest appearances of musical luminaries Mary Martin (doing a spirited if disappointingly demure version of her striptease number "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") and Ginny Simms, the latter cast as an ersatz Ethel Merman named Carole Hill. Jane Wyman, seen as Porter's pre-nuptial sweetheart Gracie Harris, also gets to sing and dance, and quite well indeed. Beset with production problems, not least of which was the ongoing animosity between star Grant and director Michael Curtiz, Night and Day managed to finish filming on schedule, and proved to be an audience favorite -- except for those "in the know" Broadwayites who were bemused over the fact that Cole Porter's well-known homosexuality was necessarily weaned from the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi