Springtime in the Rockies

Yes, this was indeed a fun and entertaining film with my favorites John Payne & Betty Grable. Music is terrific and dancing is fantastic. The Nicholas brothers do a fantastic number, and the orchestra is Harry James. Edward Everett Horton (related to me by marriage) is always a delight with his nervous mumbo jumbo and getting hooked by Carmen Miranda and her boys from Mexico. Song that stays in my mind is "I Got The Craziest Dream".

A film that takes all the stock conventions of Betty Grable musicals and distills them into one big bright package. This shows what the Hollywood dream factory could do with even the most obvious and conventional script. Filmed in lush Technicolor the film is loaded with so much talent and trimmings that the threadbare story becomes unimportant.

Betty Grable was at the peak of her popularity all dolled up in the height of 40's fashion, she and John Payne make a handsome and charming pair. They were strong enough to carry a film themselves but Fox managed to cram all the strongest supporting players from their other various movies. Charlotte Greenwood does the faithful sidekick role she did so well and gets a chance to do her unique dance routine. Caesar Romero is the dashing snook and Edward Everett Horton the droll faithful retainer. Then there's that party all on to herself Carmen Miranda fracturing the language and wearing outfits that as John Payne says are a little overdone outside a Mardi Gras. Topped off with Harry James' stellar music, including Sleepy Lagoon and I Had the Craziest Dream, weaving it's spell throughout this is the kind of shiny bauble that kept the public's mind off the war and still can't help but entertain today.

20th Century Fox knew how to build films around Betty Grable and this is one of their better efforts, thanks to the presence of a first-rate cast: John Payne, Carmen Miranda, Cesar Romero, Edward Everett Horton, Jackie Gleason and Harry James & His Orchestra.

The usual backstage story starts with Betty and frequent co-star John Payne having a spat over his womanizing ways. Before you know it, he follows her to the Rocky Mountains resort where the misunderstandings continue, involving Cesar Romero, a very funny Carmen Miranda and the bumbling Edward Everett Horton. Miranda gets to do her thing with some fractured English and some great songs tossed in. Betty displays more than modest talent in the singing and dancing department (especially graceful with Cesar Romero) and Payne firmly established himself as the most presentable leading man of the Fox musicals in the '40s. Everyone looks great in the technicolor photography. If it's musicals you like, what's not to like?

Summing up: amiable, tune-filled entertainment of the kind that doesn't exist any more. Payne's best performance since 'Sun Valley Serenade'.

There are several musicals from the early 1940s with overlapping cast memberships and similar plots. Among these are Down Argentine Way (1940), Week-End in Havana (1941), The Gang's All Here (1943) and this one.

This is my favorite of the lot, and here's why. Carmen Miranda and Edward Everett Horton.

Carmen Miranda was in all the movies I named above, and she steals the show in every single one of them. But in this one, she has a larger part.

The pairing of Carmen with Edward Everett Horton was sheer genius. The talented Horton had a wide range, from serious parts such as Lost Horizon (1937) to being the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" in the 1960s. His best roles, though, were probably his comedic ones, and he was rarely better than here.

Carmen's wild attraction to Horton is funny enough in itself, simply because it is so unlikely. She is head-over-heels for him and throws herself at him in a way only the Brazilian Bombshell can do. Combine this with the diffident Horton's hesitancy, embarrassment and overall dignified befuddlement and you've got a love story the like of which has never been filmed elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong -- this is not the front story, which takes place between Betty Grable and John Payne. It is a secondary subplot. And the story itself is secondary to the music and dancing.

Still, for me, Rosita and McTavish are the sine qua non of the film, and make it my favorite movie in which I have seen Carmen Miranda.

I wouldn't argue with anyone who said that Springtime in the Rockies might just be Betty Grable's best film. It certainly has a lot going for it.

The plot's a skimpy one as these types of films are. Betty's in love with her act partner John Payne who says he reciprocates, but can't get pinned down for marriage. After a performance in their show, she and Payne get into one fight too many and she takes off for an engagement with her former partner Cesar Romero in a resort on the shore of Lake Louise in those beautiful Canadian Rockies.

No one got near Lake Louise from 20th Century Fox. A few establishing shots of the lake with the mountains behind are all you see. Of course John Payne chases after her with some mixed motives. He wants to marry her, but he also wants her for a new show. He takes his own scenic route to Lake Louise, flying under his own power as well as by plane and finds when he both arrives and sobers up he's hired himself a secretary in Carmen Miranda and a valet in Edward Everett Horton.

Betty gets to make her first appearance on screen with her new husband, Harry James and his orchestra. Just prior and during World War II was the era of the big bands and all the studios tried to sign them up and shoe horn them into films. It was an easy fit in this case for Harry James.

Especially with a score from Harry Warren and Mack Gordon who provided James with one of his biggest hits. I Had The Craziest Dream. Played by the band with inimitable James trumpet and sung beautifully by Helen Forrest this was one of the biggest song hits of the World War II years. It still plays beautifully today.

Carmen Miranda does a couple of numbers in her unique style, you haven't lived until you've heard her do Chattanooga Choo Choo in Portugese. And in this wonderful cast in a small role is Jackie Gleason as Payne's agent. It's sad that in this wonderful cast, Gleason had a most nondescript part that shows absolutely nothing of his comic abilities.

There's nothing deep about Springtime in the Rockies, it's just fabulous entertainment with a cast you could never assemble like this today.