Song of the Islands

The story isn't much but Grable has lively song and dance numbers at the beginning and end with a big chorus line of hula girls in grass skirts (beginning) and cellophane skirts (end). Hermes Pan directed the dances. Hilo Hattie appears in a few songs, mainly "The Cockeyed Mayor of Kaunakakai" where she's entertaining if a bit overly excited. She was a popular entertainer in the 40s and onward and I was lucky to work at the Halekulani Hotel in the mid 70s when she was part of a show of old-time Hawaiian entertainers. Betty Grable is beautiful and a very energetic actor and dancer. Lightweight entertainment for sure.

Great 1940s World War II Pacific island fantasy movie. The colors are so bright they almost can't be real. Victor Mature and Jack Oakie head to an island where Betty Grable lives in tropic splendor with her father (Thomas Mitchell - Gerald O'Hara from "Gone With The Wind", same Irish accent too by the way...). The music is just fantastic, Harry Owens and his orchestra are incredible, the classic Hula Comedienne Hilo Hattie is on hand as Palola to provide comic relief in her attempts to land Jack Oakie (Jack is afraid of Palola's Cannibal uncle however...). Gloriously non-politically correct in the way that only classic movies can be. Betty Grable in a grass skirt, (wow!) no wonder all the G. I. s you speak to from that time were crazy about her!

Not so much a comedy as an opportunity to show off Betty Grable's million-dollar gams, this stinker is rendered unwatchable largely upon the arrival of two idiots (played by Victor Mature and Jack Oakie) to a fictional Hawaiian island inhabited by rival white guys and a tribe of good-hearted natives. For some unfathomable reason Oakie is pursued by a native woman and her cannibalistic cohort, both of whom are man hungry, so to speak. The absurdity of Grable as having grown up on the island and thereby mastering the hula outweighs the genuinely Hawaiian musical interludes, and although it was filmed in color, most of the sea scenes are obviously movie sets.

Apart from the fact that Victor Mature gets to act alongside of Thomas Mitchell, and the story is set in Hawaii, there is nothing to commend this film. Some of the Hawaiian characters are Americans made up to look Hawaiian. The characters are one-dimensional, and the story fails to engage the audience at any level.

I'm not a Betty Grable fan, but she does look good in a straw skirt, and she has a nice back.

The film is shot in beautiful Technicolor, but it is not a masterclass in colour grading.

I would advise Mature fans to stay away from this film as it comes nowhere near the quality of 'Samson and Delilah'.

Nice light-hearted musical set in beautiful Hawaii with Betty Grable playing Eileen O'Brien, the daughter of an Irishman played by Thomas Mitchell and Victor Mature playing her love interest. The film is full of enjoyable songs although sadly one of them, "Blue shadows and white gardenias", sang by Mature (dubbed byBen Gage) to Grable was cut from the movie (probably from the scene both share on a boat at night). Also cut -but slightly watchable in the trailer- is Betty Grable being transported on a throne chair as the queen of the luau party. From the bright start with all the natives preparing a lunch while Harry Owens's version of Hawaiian war chant Kaua i ka Huahua'i (Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai) plays as background music the film is pure escapist delight. Miss Grable delightfully sings Sing me a song of the islands when arriving to the island on a boat and then the luau party, with Hilo Hattie and Betty Grable singing funny Down on Ami Ami Oni Oni Isle -each one in her own style. Then the movie tends to go down a bit -too much Jack Oakie routines although still has its moments, specially in the grand finale with Hillo Hattie singing Cockeyed Mayor of Kaunakakai and Betty Grable singing and dancing O'Brien Has Gone Hawaiian (a Hawaiian-Irish-tap dance mix-mach) although I have much preferred miss Grable doing a Hawaiian style routine with Hawaiian music and dancing only. Hermes Pan, usually a brilliant choreographer, is not at his top here, mixing too many styles in one dance. The combination of Hawaiian style with Irish and tap dance is a bit too much of a mélange. Although could have been improved with some minor changes (i.e, there is a sequence at the beginning of the film where miss Grable brings a bathtub to the island that could have been used with her having a bath while singing a song like Deanna Durbin did in Can't help singing) it is still a beautiful, entertaining and recommended movie to watch.