Les amours de Salomé

"Salmone, Where She Danced" is Yvonne De Carlo's first movie. Apparently it made her a star...though today you wonder why. The movie isn't particularly good and there isn't much to recommend it.

The story begins in Vienna. Salome (De Carlo) is a bit but war is coming, so she accepts an American's offer to come to the States on tour. Once there, the audiences in the American west go insane for her...much like they did when Lillie Langtree toured the west. And, everywhere she goes, men go mad for her...though she seems particularly taken by a highway man who used to be a Confederate soldier.

The film never seems the least bit real, the men ALL go gaga for her in a way that is simply ridiculous and her singing and dancing are NOT particularly arousing or exciting to watch. I actually had a hard time sticking with this one...and the ending, well, it just seemed pretty tough to believe. All in all, a movie I wish I'd just skipped.

Miss DeCarlo's starring debut has everything the writers could come up with -- from the Franco-Prussian War to the US Civil War, the great American West, San Francisco in its heyday, ballet, opera, vaudeville, stage coach bandits, and a Chinese junk. Just when you thought the plot couldn't get any screwier, it does. It's magnificent, taken tongue in cheek. DeCarlo's character (here called Anna Marie -- NOT Salome, that's the role she dances) is loosely based on the career of the notorious Lola Montez, who was the mistress of the King of Prussia and caused a revolution when he gave her the crown jewels. She did escape to the American west. There is a town in Arizona called "Salome, Where She Danced," based on the historical fact that Lola Montez did dance the role of Salome there. StageCoach Cleve and the Russian nobleman who fall under her charms are not historically accurate, nor I assume is the Chinese wise man with the Scottish accent -- but it is one of my favorite all time camp classics and DeCarlo is breathtakingly beautiful throughout.

This movie is just plain bad; no story to speak of, hard to follow, no clear direction to the script or continuity. I've seen it, and I'm not sure what happens in it, except a lot of nothing. Yvonne De Carlo had appeared in shorts and small parts before this, and was a good bet to star in a feature owing to her striking beauty and vampish charm. But "Salome Where She Danced" is an embarrassing mediocrity and is certainly not "bad"in the entertaining sense of Ed Wood or others on Hollywood's third-tier. As a Universal Picture, this is actually a thoroughly failed first or second tier production, and all of its slickness and artificiality does not conceal the glaring reality that it has nothing going for it. It is not "colorized;" it's in genuine Technicolor,though even the handling of the color is flat and undynamic -- sand is light brown, and one comes away with the impression that there is an awful lot of sand in the film, and perhaps a tumbleweed or two. De Carlo struggles valiantly with this bottom-drawer material only to achieve the status of being the best thing about a movie that has nothing to offer on its own, and even that distinction is a stretch. She is lucky to have survived this feature, as other potential stars have had their careers sunk by far less than this.

I saw this in fall 1945> I had left ship on day war ended. We were in far reaches of Pacific and had not had a liberty or seen and spoken with a woman for over a year and a half. I flew to Honolulu for a school and was there for three weeks. Ship arrived and I rejoined it. Fueled and departed without touching shore. Sailors eager to get back to States and liberty and accompanying social life. The first night out the movie was Salome Where She Danced. The moans, and groans, and other manifestations of souls (and bodies) in torment would have amazed those of you who look at this movie in current times, under current circumstances.

I look at the movie now from time to time to savor the feeling of smugness I felt that night. I had had three weeks in Honolulu and so was perhaps less moved by the dance. I still look at it, though, from the experience of long deprivation.

I agree that much of the acting is deplorable, most of the plot, and all of the situations improbable. However, that dance is the whole reason for the show and in the fall of 1945 it was moving, gripping, and memorable.

This is one of the most incredible, unbelievable film that I have ever seen. Kitsch, of course, certainly, totally crazy, a mix up of western spy, historical, adventure movie with the support in the cast of the flaming Yvonne de Carlo as a kind of Mata Hari character, involved with Bismarck's army. Albert Dekker is excellent here in a German villain role, and Rod Cameron also at his place co starring the great De Carlo. Many folks say that Charles Lamont was the reaf film maker of only one film, this very one, his forever masterpiece. Many audiences will despise this, because it looks like anything, and that's precisely for this reason that I love it.