Amor en flor

The musical cinema careers of both stars was almost at an end when this film was released.Dick Powell clearly knew that his time as a juve lead was nearing its natural end as he appeared in "Farewell My Lovely" the following year.Mary Martin made one more film in this era before returning to the stage.She made very few films so a musical such as this is of great interest .Although she is quite delightful i do not think that she had the glamour of say Rita hayworth or the brashness of Betty Grable to enable her screen career to really take off.All of her performances that i have seen have been engaging without being memorable.Dick Powell does what he had been doing for 10 years on screen.Betty Hutton,Eddie Bracken and Rudy Vallee all lend support in this very entertaining and colourful 40s musical.

In 1942 Dick Powell signed a contract with Paramount Pictures on condition that he vary his roles and would occasionally do some dramatic films which Warner Brothers had refused to cast him in. But his first film for them was Star Spangled Rhythm and his bit part in that wartime musical was with Mary Martin doing probably the best number in the film, Hit the Road to Dreamland. They certainly seemed well suited for each other.

With that in mind Powell got to do his first color film Happy Go Lucky with Martin the following year. But for some reason Mary Martin never quite clicked with film audiences. I'm at a loss to know why myself because she certainly had a sparkling personality.

Powell did this one with Martin with the hope that dramatic parts would eventually come his way and Happy Go Lucky is certainly amusing enough. Powell and Eddie Bracken play a pair of beachcombers on a tropical island in the Caribbean created nicely on the Paramount sound stage. Martin is a cigarette girl pretending to be a débutante hoping to land a rich husband and her sights are set on Rudy Vallee who is reprising his role from The Palm Beach Story replete with glasses and all. Also along for the ride is Betty Hutton who is a fellow cigarette girl traveling with Martin and an old flame of Bracken's.

Certainly Bracken and Hutton seemed to team well together as they had in The Fleet's In and Star Spangled Rhythm and both would be used again to even bigger acclaim by Preston Sturges in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero. In fact Hutton stole the film right out from under the leads with her rousing rendition of Murder He Says.

As long as Rudy Vallee and Dick Powell were appearing in the same film it would have been nice if they had sung together, but Rudy did not sing a note and an opportunity was lost.

I don't think I have to talk about the plot too much more with the ingredients I've given you, I'm sure you know exactly how this will all come out. The only other item involved in this film is a voodoo love potion that apparently is spread to victim like you were spraying your garden for pests.

Happy Go Lucky is an amusing average comedy from Paramount that led to nothing for its leads, but it's supporting cast did just fine.

Enjoyable only as an artifact, Paramount's Technicolor musical "Happy Go Lucky" is a film I'd never heard of, despite a terrific cast. Obviously a flop, it still has failed to attract residual film buff attention, now a YouTube freebie.

The movie is pleasant enough, with a Norman Panama/Melvin Frank script, plenty of songs and a completely escapist atmosphere for audiences weary of WW II, but it doesn't connect. At first, with its tropical island setting and cutesy humor it seemed to have endless camp appeal, but no Carmen Miranda to put it over the top.

Instead, Mary Martin and Betty Hutton are appealing in nothing roles, while DIck Powell and Eddie Bracken sweat their way through assignments beneath their dignity. One interesting element has several Black performers cast in decent-sized supporting parts and treated respectfully, rather than only subservient bit parts. But they are not American roles, but instead Caribbean characters.

One odd touch, the Calypso song here "If You Wanna Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life..." (a/k/a "Ugly Woman") falls flat, yet given a different beat, became a Number One novelty hit in 1963 performed by Jimmy Soul. And Jimmy McHugh's "Let's Get Lost" performed by Mary Martin subsequently became a jazz standard after being introduced here, ultimately used as the title for the Chet Baker 1988 docu.

To get rich, Marjory Stuart, a gold digger, goes to Trinidad and poses as a debutant. The beach boy, Pete, immediately reveals it, but offers to help catch his enemy, Alfred Monroe, on a sailboat. Turns out Marjory's buddy, Bubbles, is Pete's old flame, Wally's buddy. Every well-planned effort to land Monroe ends in slapping simplicity; then Wally's voodoo priestess gives her a love potion that works ...

This is clearly a cast-off Crosby-Hope script with a couple of additional songs for Hutton and Martin. Panama and Frank do their regular "Road" story and the color is nice. All it needs is a patty-cake routine.