La Venus del carnaval

Penniless carnival barker Red Skelton and chorine-turned-dunking girl Esther Williams are mistaken for millionaires and are forced to enter a Chuck Wagon race to eradicate a gambling debt. Modest M-G-M comedy-musical filmed in Technicolor looks just as good as the studio's more-popular output--what was needed, however, was a screenplay with bigger laughs and stronger characterizations. Skelton juggles, sings, and performs some pleasing comedy shtick, but he's too polite here; director Charles Walters keeps Red reigned-in so much that a nutty drunk routine late in the movie seems out of place. Williams has a nifty fantasy number where she appears to pole-dance underwater (!), while Ann Miller has one great tap-dance sequence accompanied by a mad xylophone. Isolated moments of fun linked by the barest minimum of plot, though the wild slapstick finale nearly makes up for the picture's deficiencies. **1/2 from ****

This brash and often noisy Technicolor trifle is definitely not for those expecting to enjoy a series of Esther's more elaborate water ballets. She spends a minimal amount of time in the water in this one and there's only one trademark production number, a dream sequence in which she floats sinuously about in Howard Keel's darkened hotel room, trailing yards of diaphanous white veiling, that comes close to what her fans might have lined up at the box-office hoping to enjoy.

Esther, however, looks wondrously healthy and pretty throughout, the very picture of an All-American Girl, acting with her usual pert insouciance. Howard gets to unleash his rich bass-baritone in two or three forgettable songs, though he certainly looks convincing as a lanky ranch foreman. Red Skelton contributes his usual shtick, at some tedious length here and there, and even manages to amuse today's audiences with a skillfully executed pratfall or two. Ann Miller, ever the most energetic in the cast, seems to come out on top in this pastiche, tossing off a couple of her patented leg-tossing, tippy-tapping dance amazements, choreographed by the reliable Hermes Pan.

M-G-M touted this as 'Another Big MGM Musical' but it appears to have been rather thriftily produced, with some minimal location work that looks notably cobbled together, especially in a concluding and very extended chuck wagon race, which involves some dangerously risky stunt work, by the way.

Keenan Wynn lends some very sour support, as a Texas millionaire, overly fond of his bourbon. Skelton also is supposed to imbibe a prodigious amount in one drawn-out sequence, and we're meant to find it riotously funny, something that may have been acceptable back in the early 1950s but which fails to amuse as easily today, with our greater awareness of the very deleterious effects of excessive alcohol intake.

It's also amusing to note how very much inflation has devalued the American dollar in the more than half-century since this film was released. A multi-room hotel suite large enough to fill one of M-G-M's average soundstages is quoted as costing what would be the usual price in today's dollars for a single, modest hotel room in a smaller U.S. city. A doctor makes a house call, to tend a briefly ailing Ms. Williams (She's fainted from hunger, poor thing!), for a fee that wouldn't cover the charge for administering an aspirin anywhere in a U. S. health facility today. A beautiful Lincoln Cosmopolitan convertible is smashed into a tree (mercifully, off-camera) and the quoted estimated tariff for its repairs (supposedly including a ruined dashboard) is so laughably minuscule that the total wouldn't cover a six months' insurance premium assessed for an ultra-safe contemporary driver with no traffic citations on his/her record over many prior years of accident-free mileage. What price progress?!?

Esther Williams set on the MGM lot must have been in repair, maybe the pool needed a chlorine refill because none of the spectacular aquatic scenes associated with her films will be found in Texas Carnival. In fact this is really a Red Skelton film and the powers that be at MGM who always liked to keep their contract players working said do this film while we clean the pool.

It's not the greatest Esther Williams or even Red Skelton film, but it does have an amusing moment or two. Red and Esther are working at a dunk tank in a cheap carnival when an inebriated Keenan Wynn shows up and through a combination of circumstances Williams and Skelton wind up going to a Texas resort being mistaken for Wynn and his sister Paula Raymond.

They both find love and trouble at the resort with Williams taking a real liking to Howard Keel who is the foreman of Wynn's ranch and Red falling for the tap dancing sheriff's daughter in the person of Ann Miller. Red also by playing up to the big Texas cattle baron manages to lose $17,000.00 dollars in what the Texans just call a friendly game among millionaires.

As I said Texas Carnival is clearly more Red's film than Esther's and he dominates with a hilarious chuck wagon race finale and one of his patented drunk scenes. What's interesting is that in this film Skelton had Keenan Wynn to contend with in the inebriation competition. Both of these guys have played incredible imbibing scenes in their respective films.

In his memoirs Howard Keel says that Red Skelton was a comic genius, but so much so that his contemporaries had trouble keeping up with him. In that barroom scene with Keenan Wynn it took half a day to shoot because Wynn couldn't help breaking up at his performance.

Don't look for too much aquatics in this Esther Williams film, but it's a not bad Red Skelton comedy.

This little-known musical might be considered the Texas answer to (the stage musical) "Oklahoma!" And though things in Texas are supposed to be bigger, this film is smaller in many ways. But the four leads get their moments in the sun: Esther swims, Red mimes, Ann dances, and Howard sings.

Cornie the carny (Red Skelton) and his collaborator, Debbie (Esther Williams) run a dunking booth in a carnival, but they are not making ends meet. When Cornie runs into a rich, drunk cattleman Dan Sabinas (Keenan Wynn), who takes a shine to him, Cornie and Debbie leave the midway and head for a posh hotel where Sabinas is supposed to be staying. A case of mistaken identity allows them to reside there indefinitely.

The Sabinas foreman (Howard Keel as the real Slim Shelby) becomes interested in Debbie, and a hoofer named Sunshine Jackson (Ann Miller) sets her sites on Cornie. The rest of the plot is a jumble of unimportant events, including a rough and tumble chuck wagon race that is reminiscent of Ben Hur.

Keel's singing is up to his usual standards, but the songs are not Rodgers and Hammerstein. Ann Miller taps up a storm with choreography by Hermes Pan. Esther Williams swims less than she usually does in her aquafests, but she has a dream sequence that is clever. Red Skelton transforms the entire film, making it more comedy than any other genre.

Credit Helen Rose for the beautiful designs worn by the female leads.

The ending is weak, but the overall production entertains adequately.

If you want to see a direct descendant of the Buster Keaton line of comedy, this is surely the movie. Skelton's funny physical antics while trying to retrieve a dollar from the floor or getting drunk with Keenan Wynne are topped by a chuckwagon race finale that deftly combines comedy and dangerous stunts.

In the supporting cast you've got Ann Miller's legs. I esp enjoyed seeing her tap her dancers' bongos. Ahem.

Esther Williams and Howard Keel are also in this movie, I assume, because Hollywood producers needed their names on the marquee to sell tickets. Fair enough. But they're mostly wasted. That ''underwater dream sequence" is goofy. And their romance is perfunctory.

A reference to a wrecked car (with no preceding scene with Skelton presumably wrecking the car, probably with Miller on board), a reference by Williams to a dinner speech she didn't actually give, and a romance between Skelton and Miller that had no beginning (I don't count her dance number by the piano) leaves me to conclude that 15 minutes or so got hacked out of this movie after preview audiences full of dummies said, ''it dragged in parts" and ''the car wreck scene wasn't funny" or ''that speech was boring."

Nevertheless, as long as you're not expecting to see Esther Williams floating around in a pool for 90 minutes (thankfully that only lasts about 90 seconds here) this is a decent way to kill just over an hour.