Tonight and Every Night

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

This was the first movie where Rita Hayworth was given credit above the title. It's also the film she did before "Gilda", which would be her triumph. "Tonight and Every Night" is a product of the Hollywood of the late forties, when war themes were not that common. Directed by Victor Saville, the film has some good moments and as Neil Doyle has pointed out in these pages, if you're a fan of Ms. Hayworth, this is a must see! Not that it's one of the best things she ever did on the screen, but it's a good way to spend an evening in good company.

The story is based on a theater in London that never stopped operating, even in the worst days of the blitz. It's to the credit of the woman who ran the venue, May Tolliver, that she wanted to keep some sense of sanity when Londoners were going through such a rough time.

Rita Hayworth looks lovely dressed by Jean Louis. Lee Bowman plays her love interest, Paul Lindy. We also see Janet Blair, Marc Platt and Florence Bates in supporting roles. Jules Stein's music is not the kind that one keeps repeating after viewing the film.

The only thing that hasn't kept well is the Technicolor. The copy we saw recently has not aged well as it shows different skin tones in Ms. Hayworth.

Watch it, if only to get a glimpse at the lovely Rita Hayworth!

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 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.

I'm floored, I 'm devastated, I could never imagine I would enjoy this film as immensely as I just did.

Yesterday I saw "The Lady is Willing" -1942- with Marlene Dietrich, and although both films belong to the same era and in both there is froth and the morality of the time, they are worlds apart; Marlene looks like an embalmed corpse while Rita Hayworth is Mother Earth personified, all beauty, glamour and warmth, plus an excellent actress and a superb dancer, maybe the best dancer of all times for this kind of vehicle.

"Tonight and Every Night" is so very well put together that it's almost a miracle, incredible how professional those people were!! Top drawer each one in whatever they were doing: The scriptwriters, the technical film crew, the dancers, the choreographers, wow, everybody and everything!! Let aside the war propaganda very understandable for those years, I was so impressed by the camaraderie, the human bondage between the company members, the warmth the whole movie is wrapped in...

Rita Hayworth is so lovely that seems to be unreal, but not unreal the way Marlene was unreal, Marlene could freeze you on the spot with just a look, Rita doesn't look fake, she is just adorable and human. Maybe the rouge on her cheeks and the eye shadow are a bit too much, but the whole movie being a fantasy, who cares!

The costumes are gorgeous, the color combinations are superb, all the dancers, male and female, have the most slender figures anyone can imagine, they look like Barbie dolls, but human --I don't know how to put it-- we talk so much nowadays about that controversial subject, anorexia, well, already in those years they have these slim figures we have nowadays, but inexplicably, they don't look emaciated, they look incredibly healthy!!

An interesting detail was that all these chorus girls were...virgins... well, according to their behavior in this movie they were. Enough, I think I made it clear that I liked this movie, didn't I?