Lucille Bremer Movies

Behind the locked doors of a mental institution resides crooked politico Judge Drake (Herbert Heyes), free from prosecution so long as he pretends to be crazy. To get the goods on Drake, private detective Ross Stewart (Richard Carlson) has himself committed to the asylum as a patient. Meanwhile, reporter Kathy Lawrence (Lucille Bremer), posing as Stewart's wife, acts as his liaison to the outside world. But when Drake figures out what's going on, he pulls strings to have Stewart meet with an "accident" during his stay at the institution. Ralf Harolde, who memorably portrayed a seedy psychiatrist in Murder My Sweet, contributes another excellent performance in Behind Locked Doors as a sympathetic attendant with Something To Hide. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Unusually lavish for an Eagle-Lion production, The Adventures of Casanova lacks only Technicolor and "star" names. Lensed in Mexico, the film stars Latin American heartthrob Arturo de Cordova in the title role, and MGM expatriate (and future Mexican citizen) Lucille Bremer as the lovely Lady Bianca. Though ample screen time is expended upon Casanova's amorous conquests, most of the film is in the swashbuckler mode, as the hero battles the despotic Austrian rules in 18th century Sicily. The film gets down to basics when Casanova squares off against his bitterest foe, Austrian envoy Count de Brissac John Sutton. Comedy relief is handled by Turhan Bey as Casanova's philosophical sidekick and George Tobias as a spy posing as a monk. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue, much like such early talkies as Hollywood Revue of 1929 and Paramount on Parade. We meet a grayed, immaculately garbed Ziegfeld in Paradise (his daily diary entry reads "Another heavenly day"), where he looks down upon the world and muses over the sort of show he'd be putting on were he still alive. Evidently Ziegfeld's shade has something of a celestial conduit to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, since his "dream" show is populated almost exclusively by MGM stars. Vincente Minnelli is given sole directorial credit at the beginning of the film, though many of the individual "acts" were helmed by other hands. The Bunin puppets offer a tableau depicting anxious theatregoers piling into a Broadway theatre, as well as caricatures of Ziegfeld's greatest stars. The opening number, "Meet the Ladies", spotlights a whip-wielding (!) Lucille Ball, a bevy of chorus girls dressed as panthers, and, briefly, Margaret O'Brien. Kathryn Grayson and "The Ziegfeld Girls" perform "There's Beauty Everywhere." Victor Moore and Edward Arnold show up in an impressionistically staged adaptation of the comedy chestnut "Pay the Two Dollars". Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer (a teaming which evidently held high hopes for MGM) dance to the tune of "This Heart is Mine." "Number Please" features Keenan Wynn in an appallingly unfunny rendition of an old comedy sketch (performed far better as "Alexander 2222" in Abbott and Costello's Who Done It?) Lena Horne, strategically placed in the film at a juncture that could be edited out in certain racist communities, sings "Love". Red Skelton stars in the film's comedy highlight, "When Television Comes"-which is actually Skelton's classic "Guzzler's Gin" routine (this sequence was filmed late in 1944, just before Red's entry into the armed services). Astaire and Bremer return for a lively rendition of "Limehouse Blues". Judy Garland, lampooning every Hollywood glamour queen known to man, stops the show with "The Interview". Even better is the the historical one-time-only teaming of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in "The Babbitt and the Bromide". The excellence of these sequence compensate for the mediocrity of "The Sweepstakes Ticket", wherein Fanny Brice screams her way through a dull comedy sketch with Hume Cronyn (originally removed from the US prints of Ziegfeld Follies, this sequence was restored for television). Excised from the final release print (pared down to 110 minutes, from a monumental 273 minutes!) was Judy Garland's rendition of "Liza", a duet featuring Garland and Mickey Rooney, and a "Baby Snooks" sketch featuring Fanny Brice, Hanley Stafford and B. S. Pully. A troubled and attenuated production, Ziegfeld Follies proved worth the effort when the film rang up a $2 million profit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Yolanda and the Thief has long been considered the nadir of Arthur Freed's years as an MGM musical producer. Unappreciated at the time of its release, the film was a huge financial and critical failure. It has since become a cult film and cinematic cause celebre, revered by its adherents and condemned by its detractors. For the record, Fred Astaire stars as a suave but strangely unsympathetic con arstist Johnny Parkson Riggs, who convince sheltered South American heiress Yolanda (Lucille Bremer) that he's her guardian angel. Naturally, Johnny falls in love with Yolanda and tries to find a way to put an end to the scam job cooked up by himself and his partner-in-crime Victor Budlow Trout (Frank Morgan). Meanwhile, a mysterious character named Mr. Candle (Leon Ames) watches the proceedings with seemingly detached amusement (guess who he turns out to be!) With the exception of "Coffee Time", most of the film's musical numbers are forgettable; Astaire and Lucille Bremer dance well together, but generate none of the charisma necessary to sustain a whimsical tale of this nature. As for Bremer alone, her biggest scene takes place in an artfully arranged bubble bath; undeniably gorgeous, she frankly isn't much of an actress. It is difficult to assess Yolanda and the Thief pro or con; this is one film that is guaranteed to either delight or aggravate the viewer, with no "middle ground." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide