Cette nuit et toujours

Rita Hayworth is an American performer during the blitz in "Tonight and Every Night." The film is based on the true story of a theater that kept going during the horrific bombings London suffered, unlike other theaters, which closed their doors. In the film, a photographer from Life arrives to do a feature about the theater and hears a story about Rita and friends from a stagehand.

What a gorgeous woman and dancer Rita was, and what charisma! She sparkles on the screen and is stunningly beautiful in this Technicolor film. She looks like her magazine covers - perfect. Lee Bowman is her leading man, Janet Blair plays her best friend, and Marc Platt, a Broadway dancer who is an absolute dynamo, plays a fellow performer.

There really isn't much to this script, except that there's a somewhat unexpected plot twist and the ending isn't as expected. We're looking in one direction while the script goes in another. There are some nifty production numbers and some pretty songs - better, I think, than those found in another Hayworth vehicle, Down to Earth.

Rita's voice is always dubbed, but I wonder if she could sing or could have sung with some training. Guess we'll never know.

Seeing Rita is always worth it.

It's WWII London. Rosalind Bruce (Rita Hayworth) is the star performer at the Music Box Theatre. A Life magazine photographer is doing a story on the theatre which never closed during the Blitz. A stagehand recounts the story. In flashback, Rosalind is pursued by RAF pilot Paul Lundy (Lee Bowman).

This musical is mostly about watching Rita Hayworth doing her dancing. Of course, she's a great dancer although she is dubbed for her singing. That's perfectly fine. The romance starts well, flutters for awhile, and ends on an important note. It is melodramatic at times, but that's the movie. The war is ending soon and this is bittersweet recall of recent events.

This film is based on a real theater and theater troop during WWII. The theater never closed its doors despite the Blitz with bombs falling all around and over it. (It was an underground theater.) It's a part of England's history.

This isn't the best film ever made, but certainly not the worst as some have made it out to be. It's simply a light musical mixed with drama.

To see another take on this story be sure to see "Mrs. Henderson Presents" with Dame Judy Dench and Bob Hoskins. It's a fantastic film that really presents the way it was "back then." I know, because I was around then and this film brought back some good and some bad memories.

DLMc

The movie's number one sex symbol carried a lot of films to box office success on the strength of her looks and personality. But Rita Hayworth was definitely asked to tote a lot in Tonight And Every Night, a film set during the air attacks on London about a theater that never missed a performance. There was actually such a theater as the Windmill.

A whole lot of extravagant musical numbers photographed in gorgeous technicolor are held together by a plot involving Rita being the object of a campaign by Eagle Squadron RAF member Lee Bowman. Though she's warned by fellow performer and best friend Janet Blair that Bowman's a wolf in Eagle Squadron uniform, Rita plunges headlong into things. She's also got dancer Marc Platt interested in her as well.

For a British set film, this cast sure had an awful lot of Americans. This film would have been so much better done across the pond with someone like Jessie Matthews or Anna Neagle starring. The numbers are nice enough though, the musical score by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn contained one song, Anywhere which got an Oscar nomination. A much better song of their's that Frank Sinatra sung in Anchors Aweigh, I Fall In Love Too Easily, was also nominated that year, but Rodgers and Hammerstein got the statue that year for It Might As Well Be Spring. Tonight And Every Night also got an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Scoring.

The musical numbers are great, but the plot is pretty thin.

This is one Rita Hayworth movie that can be considered an underrated gem.

Though the musical score is serviceable and the dancing at times inspired, it is the relationships between the principle characters of a small London Musical Theatre Revue led by star performer Rosalind Bruce (Rita Hayworth), set against the raging London blitz of WWII, that propels this film. The WWII/London/Theatre setting really shapes the mood and atmosphere of the story, giving a 'real world' urgency and poignancy to the film that most "behind the scenes/let's put on a show" musicals of the period lack. The characters each experience the triumph and tragedy and sacrifice of the blitz, all the while trying to stay together and put on their show night after night.

Rita looks ravishing in Technicolor, and gives a performance that is confident and skilled. And, of course, her dancing is in top form. Her wild samba number "You Excite Me" cements her position as one of the Silver Screen's finest dancers. She receives fine support from Marc Platt (who's dance solo at the beginning of the film set to flipping radio stations is stellar) and Janet Blair (watch her and Rita chew up the scenery with their musical number "The Boy I Left Behind") as her best friends and fellow performers. Lee Bowman as her Air Squadron Leader love interest, Florence Bates as the grand dame of the Music Box Theatre where the story unfolds (the small theatre almost another character unto itself), and Leslie Brooks in her small role as a man hungry performer with a heart of gold, round out this excellent cast.

A treat for Rita Hayworth fans and new fans alike.