Moonlight in Havana

In this, only his second film, Mann is working with a slight, but naively amusing and very well-constructed script, made almost purely out of nearly abstract conflict. A baseball player (Allan Jones) also happens to sing well -- but only when he has a cold! Having been suspended from his team (the "Blue Sox"!) he is offered a job singing when a show packager (the always excellent William Frawley) chances to hear him sing in a restaurant over the kitchen loudspeaker. Reluctant to take the job (and not managing to warn Frawley that his voice is only good when he has a cold), when he learns that the gig is in Havana he jumps at the chance: it's a free trip to his team's spring training. While there is no real interest in the story, there is constant conflict, which, between the many mediocre but pretty musical numbers keeps things moving at a furious pace, much helped by a relentlessly elliptical narrative strategy. So, though he has little to work with in the way of budget, talent (Jane Frazee, a kind of wartime Tovah Feldshuh, is not much) or distinguished writing (the songs are unfailingly forgettable save for the Kurt Weill-flavored title song), Mann manages to make a rambunctious and lively entertainment. Among the film's incidental pleasures are a teenage tap sextet (this was wartime, so much of the talent was either 4F or below draft age), a comic dance duo of shocking violence (she repeatedly bops his head with her elbow, accompanied by an excruciating "crack" on the soundtrack), and two brief appearances by Jack Norton, playing (marvelously as always) the same drunk he played over and over for Preston Sturges. Norton's on screen partner, however, a supposed "comic," is totally lacking in anything resembling humor. He's the one real minus of this film -- unless you are allergic to Allan Jones, which I thought I was. But he plays this with an easy charm that is most ingratiating. Too bad Warner Archives did not release this very amusing film rather than the very dull "The Bamboo Blonde." But that's how it seems to go...

Very silly story of a pro catcher who also is equipped with Allan Jones' tenor, who signs to tour with a song-and-dance troupe, but he only can sing when he has a cold, but he reunites with his team while under contract to the show, but his manager doesn't want him playing ball while he's sick, so he has to make ice- and heat-induced lightning shifts from sick to well and back. Further complications with his girlfriend (Jane Frazee) and the ball club owner's daughter (Marjorie Lord, who is frightening) who would like to be his girlfriend. It's over in an hour, and along the way there's much vocalizing and a specialty act or two, and pretty good production values for a Universal B. Jones actually throws and catches as if he knew what he was doing, and he was always a professional actor/singer, even in substandard circumstances like this. Paired opposite the unexciting Frazee, he loses a little luster, and the endless conniving of William Frawley, as his agent, is instantly tiresome. But there's utterly no pretense to it, and the sitcom plotting hurries it along.

When Allan Jones had to do Moonlight In Havana, he must have cursed the day he decided to leave MGM because he didn't want to be behind Nelson Eddy all the time. He also must have wondered what happened to the studio where in fact he had done Showboat and The Boys From Syracuse.

This is one of the dumbest plots I've ever seen done for a musical and with one exception, the score of original songs by Dave Franklin is singularly unmemorable. Jones is a baseball catcher who has broken training for the last time and is on suspension. But agent William Frawley has heard him sing and wants him to pursue another career.

There's an interesting medical condition that Jones has that I will say I've never seen in another film. That magnificent tenor only emerges when he's got a cold. So in order to induce the voice, he's constantly trying to catch cold throughout the film. Besides being medically impossible, the idea of this man flirting with pneumonia to hit a few high Cs is beyond stupid. Of course to play baseball for the Blue Sox, he's got to be in good shape.

Besides the career choices Jones is also caught between two women, singer Jane Frazee and ballclub owner's daughter Marjorie Lord. If you're interested in seeing who he winds up with you are condemned to sit through the little more than an hour running time of Moonlight In Havana.

In the days before Castro, Havana was a popular place for the major leagues to appear and to do training. The Dodgers trained there until their complex at Vero Beach, Florida was opened.

I'm betting that Allan Jones probably had the producer's interpolate the public domain song of I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now into the score for him to sing. It's a particular favorite of mine and the highlight of a bad film and Jones really does this most simple and basic of love ballads real justice.

But it's not enough to save this film.