Song of the Islands

Shot in color and released in 1942, "Song of the Islands" is a comedy about the relationship between Betty Grable (as Eileen O'Brien) and Victor Mature (as Jefferson Harper). The new couple seems happy until a conflict arises between their fathers.

Her father, Dennis O'Brien (Thomas Mitchell), is a long-time resident of Hawaii. He leads a low-key life of relaxation, based upon the principles of aloha. Life for him is about goodness toward others. And an inspired laissez-faire laziness. When Jefferson's father (George Barbier)--owner of an adjacent cattle ranch--wants to purchase access rights to O'Brien's waterfront property so that he can more easily export his cattle, O'Brien is insulted. He would gladly give him the rights for free, but resents efforts to reduce the transaction to a legal contract.

It's a premise that merely serves to contrast the two ways of life. The real story is the dancing and singing of Betty Grable and a chorus line of local hula girls. The dance numbers by Hermes Pan feature an Irish jig hula with swing elements (danced to "O'Brien Has Gone Hawaiian"). The songs, mostly by Owens and Gordon, include catchy ditties like "The Cockeyed Mayor of Kuanakakai (which gets a comic delivery by Hilo Hattie, who assumed that name after her role in this film) and "What's Buzzin' Cousin" (which comic relief Jack Oakie plays with).

It's a film with a heart of celebration and it will serve to push the wartime popularity of Grable, who becomes America's best known pinup girl. It's release only four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor could be viewed as a tribute to the island way of life, but I honestly don't know how Americans viewed its release so soon after the historic surprise attack.

Jeff Harper (Victor Mature) has been sent by his father to bargain for some prime cattle land....in Hawaii. While the cattle industry was big on some of the islands, why folks from the continental US would want a piece of this action is confusing. Regardless, Jeff arrives on the fictional Hawaiian island of Ahmi-Oni with his friend, Rusty (Jack Oakie). The first thing Jeff sees is Eileen (Betty Grable) and he's hooked but thinks (??) that she is a native and doesn't understand English (despite being VERY blonde). Soon he's in love and seems to have forgotten about his business...and soon Dad arrives to try to get talks back on track. Who will win out in the end? The love-struck son or the business-minded dad?

This film is a pleasant and lightweight bit of entertainment. The songs are mostly a distraction as big production numbers seem to have nothing to do with island life...but so it was in the 1940s! The romance is also cute but the best part is the grouchy gather, as George Barbier as one of the best supporting actors of his age when it came to playing old grouches! Enjoyable but slight.

I never thought that this was one of the better Grable pictures and as I am taking a break from re-watching it for the first time in a decade I still hold to that original opinion.

The film has, if possible, too many character actors - Thomas Mitchell, George Barbier, Jack Oakie, Billy Gilbert, Hilo Hattie. And there is too much bickering.

OTOH, most of the songs are very tuneful, though undistinguished and the Technicolor is, as always, eye-popping.

The high points in the film are almost all Grable. If the film had been destroyed after the first reel, it likely would not have mattered because Grable's absolutely gorgeous entry into the film on a small outrigger just off shore of a tropical is breathtaking as is her brilliantly pretty face and figure.

And what a figure! All curves and plenty of them, looking delicious in clingy island dresses and hula girl out-fits. What a bundle! 5'4" (As I thought when looking at her while danced barefoot) and she measured in at 34 1/2-24-36 (self-described 1940).

She is singing "Sing Me a Song of the Islands" as she heads towards shore with her blonde hair blowing gently in the breeze as she softly offers the song in that vastly under-rated melodious and well modulated beguiling voice of hers. She's radiant with gleaming white teeth and big eyes as she sings the entire song in 90 seconds with the big Technicolor camera slowly zooms in from a medium shot to what becomes a near full lose up if her expressive face, never once breaking away...all in one shot.

I had a customer in my video store about 15 years ago who had not seen Song of the Islands since its original release in 1942 and all he remembered all those years was that opening shot of Betty Grable, her hair blowing in the tropical breeze and singing "Sing Me a Song of the Islands". Movie magic!

Victor Mature is in the film, too. He looks fine.

Hilo Hattie is the Hawaiian version of Charlotte Greenwood in the film; man hungry and doing her eccentric dances and songs.

As mention, it is not one of the 'great Grables' of the era, in spite of having the talented Walter Lang, who had directed some of Grable's best films in the 1940.

Unfortunately, what ever momentum the film has fairly comes to a halt about 50 minutes into the picture at which time there is little question (if there was ever any) about how the film will wrap up. The pictures weakest tunes are trotted out and Grable's last dance sequence is far from memorable.

Jack Oakie, playing Mature's sidekick (and only 39 years old at the time) manages to squeeze in a song and a romance for himself with a pretty island girl even younger than Grable and he and Hilo Hattie have the last laugh in the film. (Oakie frequently seems to get a special moment at the end of the films he is in. He had a big following and was extremely popular with everyone.) All in all...very lightweight stuff. Nice try by all involved. There's better Grables out there.

Now I'll go back and rewind the tape and watch that opening island sequence one more time. It's a freeze-framers delight!

Not so much a comedy as an opportunity to show off Betty Grable's million-dollar gams, this stinker is rendered unwatchable largely upon the arrival of two idiots (played by Victor Mature and Jack Oakie) to a fictional Hawaiian island inhabited by rival white guys and a tribe of good-hearted natives. For some unfathomable reason Oakie is pursued by a native woman and her cannibalistic cohort, both of whom are man hungry, so to speak. The absurdity of Grable as having grown up on the island and thereby mastering the hula outweighs the genuinely Hawaiian musical interludes, and although it was filmed in color, most of the sea scenes are obviously movie sets.

I'm not sure but that Song of the Islands was had been done before December 7, 1941 and definitely before US servicemen started bleeding and dying in the South Seas. There certainly is no mention of World War II at all in this escapist Betty Grable film where she's poaching on Dorothy Lamour's south sea territory.

I'm sure that Darryl Zanuck must have saw the kind of money that Paramount was raking in with those Dorothy Lamour sarong pictures. So why not put the woman who had risen to be their top musical star in the tropics. They gave Betty a hula grass skirt instead of a sarong, the better to show her legs with.

Zanuck was also smart enough not to pass the blond Grable as a native Hawaiian. She's come home to teach school on the island where her father, Thomas Mitchell, has a small place, but also where George Barbier is the absentee owner of a cattle ranch.

Barbier's place is run by Hal Spencer, but Victor Mature and Jack Oakie sail over from America to see if they can buy out Mitchell. Mature is Barbier's son and of course when he and Grable meet, the inevitable sparks do fly.

Zanuck also put an official Hawaiian imprimatur on Song of the Islands by using Harry Owens to write the music with Mack Gordon's lyrics. Owens was the musical interpreter of Hawaii to the world, his most famous song being Sweet Leilani. And a Hawaiian national treasure named Hilo Hattie also appears in the film, singing in her inimitable style and setting her marriage cap for Jack Oakie.

It's all light and pleasant escapist entertainment and Song of the Islands is a good indication of why Betty Grable was the number one pin-up of GIs all over the globe. Except for Rita Hayworth.