Week-End in Havana

Alice Faye, John Payne, Carmen Miranda and Cesar Romero all fair better in this lively and funny musical romp, directed by Walter Lang and enlivened by Fox's shimmering Technicolor, gorgeous costumes, and some nice rollicking musical numbers.

Although "Week-End in Havana" is not as totally rapturous and frivolous as "Down Argentine Way" & "That Night in Rio", I was thoroughly entertained. The plot is kind of unremarkable but it offers subtantial showcase for its stars. Faye is the showgirl and tourist named Nan who gets a taste of Havana after her ship wrecks off the coast of Florida. Payne is Jay, the ship company representative who guides Nan in Havana and persuades the gambler Monte Blanca (Romero) to romance her in order to avoid legal battles. The gambler's girlfriend is the feisty Rosita Rivas (Miranda) who gets jealous of her man's coy romancing with the American tourist. Ultimately a romance blooms between Nan and Jay and the rest is history.

All of this romantic nonsense is enlivened by the some catchy, entertaining musical numbers and dances, including "Romance and Rhumba", "Tropical Magic", "The Man with the Lollypop", and "Week End in Havana".

Worth catching if you love this sort of fluff.

The film begins with a cruise ship getting stuck on a reef. The cruise line sends one of its execs (John Payne) to meet the passengers in order to placate them and get each one to sign a release. However, one (Alice Faye) is not so easily satisfied and refuses to sign. After all, she cannot afford to take another trip a couple weeks later and she insists that the cruise line owes her a vacation and NOW! So, to avoid a lawsuit, he arranges for the woman to be flown to Havana to be wined and dined in style. She is happy but won't sign the release until AFTER the trip is over--as it COULD still be a lousy vacation. So, to be sure the vacation is great, he arranges for a local ne'er-do-well (Cesar Romero) to romance her. The problem is that he already has a girlfriend (Carmen Miranda)--and she's one jealous lady! What's next? Well, it's pretty predictable but quite entertaining.

This picture is pretty much what you'd expect from a film from this studio--some very nice Technicolor, a few songs and a lot of fun. While none of "Week-End in Havana" is certainly NOT a great film, it is a decent little time-passer and is worth seeing. It's also one of Miranda's best films, as she's used more effectively than in many of her Fox movies.

By the way, at the 73 minute mark, you can catch a brief glimpse of Hugh Beaumont--but look fast or you'll miss him.

The production team behind this film would have benefited if they had done research for the movie by taking a real weekend in Havana. It appears the studio executives flew down to Rio instead. How else did they come up with music and costumes that are more Brazilian than Cuban?

Maybe the studio thought of this as a vehicle for Carmen Miranda, the charismatic Brazilian star. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense at all to have turned everything into a samba flavored musical that is completely out of character with its setting of the romantic allure Havana of the 40s.

The music is mildly entertaining. We know what will happen and how it will end, yet, we stay with a movie that has been done better before. Walter Lang directed on auto pilot because there is nothing in the film that shows anything new that we haven't seen before.

Alice Faye plays a Macy's sales lady on a Caribbean cruise. Ms. Faye is a charming presence in the film. John Payne is the man who is sent to deal with the possible problem caused by the accident of the ship and ends up falling madly in love with the sales woman. Cesar Romero is suave as the gambler that tries to endear himself to the woman he thinks is an heiress. Carmen Miranda is the singing sensation at the Casino Madrileno.

"Weekend in Havana" is an inoffensive way to spend a little more than an hour and a half with these characters.

Although none of the principal players set foot in Havana, Cuba for the production of Weekend in Havana, Darryl F. Zanuck sent a second unit crew down there to get enough background shots and longshots with doubles of the players to make one feel they were having a Weekend in Havana. Usually the studios just relied on newsreel footage so 20th Century Fox was spending more than most studios would at this time.

There are certain plot similarities to Paramount's Waikiki Wedding that starred Bing Crosby and Shirley Ross four years earlier. In fact George Barbier has the same kind of part in both, a business executive who wants to make sure a young woman has the time of her life on vacation be it Hawaii or Cuba.

In this case it's Alice Faye, a shopgirl who saved her money for a cruise and in this case the cruise ship ran aground on a reef on the Cuban coast. She just doesn't want to sign a waiver to get the company off the hook for a lawsuit. So John Payne who is about to become Barbier's son-in-law is sent to get that waiver by hook or crook.

What he ends up doing is trying to make sure Faye has a good time in Havana under his personal management. He even calls in a broke Cesar Romero in for a bit of romance when Faye doesn't take to him. Payne offers to pay Romero's debts to casino owner Sheldon Leonard and that doesn't sit too well with Carmen Miranda, Romero's girlfriend. And the whole business ain't sitting too well with Cobina Wright who is Payne's fiancé.

I'm sure you can figure out where this is going plot wise. In addition to those mentioned look for nice performances from Billy Gilbert as a club owner and Leonid Kinskey as an ever helpful bellhop.

Seeing Payne and Faye sing together once again confirms my thesis in that 20th Century Fox hired him to take the musical leads opposite their stars like Faye, Betty Grable, etc. He shows himself once again to be a singing Tyrone Power. Alice and he make lovely music, but of course the hit of the film is Carmen Miranda. As it was in any film she was in.

Another Latin American good will film. Interesting how we got our ideas about Latin America from films like these. Nice entertainment, but bad sociopolitics.

As a kid growing up in the late '70s, I used to watch quite a lot of Technicolor musicals from M-G-M and 20th Century-Fox on my local public TV station. But this particular one was not one of them so when I saw this was in my local library, I had to get it! Having just watched this with Mom right now, it's quite a delight seeing the full spectrum of colors especially when Carmen Miranda is on the screen doing her numbers! There's also Alice Faye, John Payne, Cesar Romero along with nice support from the likes of Sheldon Leonard (another player from my favorite movie It's a Wonderful Life I like to cite when I see them in another picture) and Billy Gilbert (as a waiter who's not above tripping someone if they don't pay!). The songs are pretty enjoyable and the comedy is pretty hilarious part of the time. So on that note, Mom and I recommend Week-End in Havana.