The Bamboo Blonde

The Bamboo Blonde came out in 1946 just past the era of World War II when this story would still have an appeal. It's a minor league musical with one of the major league vocalists of the day Frances Langford.

Russell Wade a young pilot assigned a new crew is in his last night in the states and he meets up with Frances Langford, singer in a struggling nightclub owned by Ralph Edwards. On his last night state side they have an innocent fling and he goes off to war with her picture and the reputation of a lady killer. Wade's also slightly engaged to Jane Greer.

But after a run of bad luck the crew paints Langford's picture on the fuselage and the plane starts racking up zeroes with Memphis Belle like clockwork. Langford becomes a celebrity due to the Army Air Corps publicity machine. She's also quite the inspiration to our fighting men.

The film is narrated in flashback by Ralph Edwards who's turned The Bamboo Blonde into a cottage industry. Some forgettable songs by an unforgettable singer. It's a pleasant piece of post war fluff.

With only a 67-minute run time, this must have been made as a B movie, something that alternated with a feature with a better-known cast and a longer run-time in houses that showed double features.

It's primary purpose is to feature Frances Langford, the very popular singer from radio and World War II Bob Hope tours overseas. She was an attractive woman and a wonderful singer - though she isn't given anything memorable here to sing, which largely negates her potential contribution.

Whether she was a good actress we can't tell from this movie either. It gives her nothing to work with.

But the problem here is with the character of the man she falls for, a bomber pilot. He's nice looking in a generic sort of way. But he has all the backbone of a wet noodle, leaving us to wonder what she could see in him. We know that he allowed himself to become *almost engaged* to a gold-digging social climber before he was sent overseas, even though he admits he doesn't love her.

This comes to a head - sort of - near the end of the picture when the gold-digger invites Langford, her nightclub friend, and the pilot to a dinner party, telling them that she has also invited the pilot's parents. (Not true.) The pilot thinks this will be a chance for his folks to get to know Langford, so he convinces her to come.

When they get to the party, the gold-digger says that the pilot's parents couldn't come after all. Rather than escorting Langford away to a private dinner, the pilot allows himself to be dragged into the party by some of the gold-digger's scheming guests, leaving Langford (almost) alone with the gold-digger. If he's not going to stand up for her, why should she be interested in him?

Then the gold-digger tells Langford and her friend to change into their costumes so they can perform for the guests. (Langford is a singer at a night club.) Rather than pointing out that they had been invited as guests and not as performers, Langford and her pal go along with it. Why?

Then, because she is angry at an imagined slight from the pilot's parents, Langford changes into something mildly slinky - but only mildly - to perform what is an only mildly hot - let's say luke-warm - torch song. This makes no sense, because that was not the sort of song we had seen her perform - or the sort of dress we had seen her wear - when we saw her perform in a nightclub previously.

It's a manufactured climax that goes nowhere, because the pilot doesn't seem to care about the dress - and his parents didn't see it anyway.

That's all there is to this movie, I'm afraid. If you like to listen to Langford sing, you'll be disappointed with her material here. If you want a good plot, ditto.

I am a great fan of Anthony Mann because of his brilliant and inventive, sometimes scary noirs. I knew he'd directed other types of movies but this is the first (other than his later Westerns and 1950s stuff) I've seen.

This is a very appealing romantic comedy. Frances Langford was no great actress but she had a pretty mezzo. She is a little like Doris Day, it seems, and a little like the great Anita Ellis.

Russell Wade: Why didn't this guy have a major career? He is very good here, as he is in "The Ghost Ship." And I almost didn't recognize Jane Greer as his bitchy society-girl fiancée! She is (as always, except in a 1950s comedy whose name blessedly escapes me) wonderful. She seemed best in noirs, as bad girls with no conscience. Here she is a rich girl with no conscience.

This has the same structure as classic noirs. It is told in flashback. I found the movie appealing from start to finish.

Hollywood was turning out these slightly built musicals by the score during the war. Though this one wasn't released until mid-'46, it has all the markings. Hotshot bomber pilot Pat (Wade) meets nightclub singer Louise (Langford) and, guess what, they fall in love. Trouble is he's already engaged to conniving, snooty Eileen (Greer) who won't let him go. So romantic complications ensue. In between these, Langford gets to warble a few tunes, while the fast- talking Edwards gets to act the bigshot promoter. Add the always wise-cracking Iris Adrian as somebody or other named Montana, and you've got an entertaining cast. Sure, it's all forgotten 10-minutes later, but in the meantime, the shenanigans go down like a pleasant little snack.

As a masterclass in what a great auteur can do with trite, uncharacteristic material, 'The Bamboo Blonde' is a must see. With a bizarre mixture of war propaganda, romantic comedy and musical, Mann manages to offer a prototype of the frayed masculinity so familiar from his noirs, Westerns and historical epics (see the final third, the ritual humiliation of the amiable hero); as well as his subversive interest in signs (see especially the musical number where the heroine walks through a landscape of labelled props), and the gaping difference between their value and the reality they hide. All this AND Jane Greer, as duplicitous a nay-sayer here to American masculinity as she would be a year later in the greatest ever noir, 'Out of the Past'.