La città del piacere

Las Vegas 1952 would have been the place to be so a film starring the beautiful Jane Russell being the affection of not one, not two, but three men made it a place that all men would want to visit. Jane Russell who plays a former Las Vegas lounge singer named Linda Rollins and is currently married to an addictive gambler named Lloyd Rollins (played by Vincent Price) who prefers the crap tables to bedding his gorgeous wife Linda.

Linda would prefer to avoid Las Vegas all together since her past memories have her in the arms of a recent army veteran named Dave Andrews (Victor Mature) who she abruptly left Las Vegas apparently never to see him again. Now Dave Matthews is a Lieutenant with the Las Vegas police department and when Linda's expensive but insured diamond necklace goes missing and the slimy Fabulous Las Vegas casino owner is found murdered, it is up to Lieutenant Dave Matthews to find the killer and he has a couple of suspects in mind which include his former lover Linda Rollins and her husband Lloyd.

I chuckled when I saw Victor Mature with his overly exaggerated broad shoulders (nothing that hidden shoulder pads under his suit jacket couldn't assist with) meeting his former lover the now unhappily married Linda Rollins. There is an insurance investigator named Tom Hubler (Brad Dexter) also trailing the Rollins couple to ensure her very expensive diamond necklace stays safe but needless to say it vanishes under mysterious circumstances and the Fabulous casino owner is murdered on the floor of his own casino.

The film was novel for its time having the early Las Vegas strip as the backdrop, the gorgeous lounge singer Jane Russell with her piano playing Hoagy Carmichael having one or two numbers to shine, an insurance investigator, a lieutenant of the Las Vegas police department and what film would not be complete without a despicable addicted gambler like Vincent Price?

It is a decent crime/drama/romance film which holds up pretty well for being 66 years old.

Shady business man and compulsive gambler Vincent Price and luscious wife Jane Russell get off the trans-continental train they're on on their way to LA to do some gambling in Las Vegas. They stay at the Fabulous Hotel where Price convinces the management to extend him $100,000 in credit so he can have money to gamble with. The movie has a somewhat interesting back story about Price and a ruined business partner in Boston. As well there is another back story about Russell and Las Vegas detective Victor Mature, who seem to have met a while ago when she was a singer at a casino where Hoagy Carmichael is the long time pianist and band leader. He (Carmichael) does a great number about a little over half-way through the film that must be seen. As well, Russell is wearing a super expensive diamond bracelet that is the object of an aggressive insurance investigator. For my money, Price, Carmichael, and the vintage Vegas scenes are the only really compelling reasons to watch, except for a decent chase between a helicopter and a Mercury woody across the desert which leads to an interesting fight in an abandoned military base.

Jane Russell's performance in "The Las Vegas Story" couldn't really be classified as acting since most of what she does here is react in a series of carefully posed close-ups. Still, when she relaxes a bit at the piano or offers to help an injured pilot, she's much more than just a sultry glamorous-puss--she's actually human. Russell's a former Vegas chanteuse who returns to her old digs after a stint in Palm Springs and a marriage to gambling-addict Vincent Price; she crosses paths again with ex-flame Victor Mature, now a police lieutenant, yet doesn't bat an eyelash when her hubby is eventually jailed on suspicion of murder. Despite the juicy-fruit dialogue and would-be hard-boiled atmospherics, this is a pretty simple and silly story, indeed. Price is the only member of the cast who tries creating a character; Mature goes through the motions unhappily while piano-man Hoagy Carmichael and police captain Jay C. Flippen are ridiculously over-the-top (and speaking of ridiculous, Carmichael's solo number "The Monkey Song" has to seen and heard to be believed!). There's not many females prominently featured besides Jane Russell...but that's acceptable. She'd walk all over them anyway. **1/2 from ****

Tepid love story except for the exciting chase climax. Seems Mature and Russell had a marriage-bound romance in Las Vegas before they were separated by the war. Now Russell's visiting Vegas with her wheeler-dealer husband Price. Meanwhile, Mature has become a lieutenant on the Vegas police force. So what's going to happen when the former lovers meet as they must, especially when a valuable necklace disappears and a casino murder complicate things.

The movie promotes Vegas's strip at a time when the town was emerging as a gambling-vacation center. The following year, 1953, Sinatra would reinvent his career by connecting the Nevada town with glamorous Hollywood entertainers. And the rest, as they say, is history. Anyway, I expect this flick was one of the first to bring the strip to small town America.

And who better to draw in movie audiences than two of Hollywood's most physical specimens, the broad-shouldered Mature and the buxom Russell, though her attributes are downplayed here. At the time, Mature was an established star, while Russell's career was beginning to take off, especially with the following year's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

I doubt, however, that this rather bland narrative advanced either career. Coming from Howard Hughes' RKO and his well-known fascination with Vegas, I imagine contract player Russell had little choice. Anyway, the wryly entertaining Hoagy Carmichael injects some atmosphere, along with a slicked up Robert Wilke in a departure from his usual thuggish roles. Too bad, however, that we don't see more of the great Vincent Price who injects both spirit and style into the proceedings. Nonetheless, catch that swooping copter chase that I'm sure thrilled audiences of the time and still does.

All in all, it looks like the movie was built around Hughes's sharp eye for Vegas's emerging glitz. At the same time, the two leads furnish audience come-ons. Too bad the story itself comes across more like a pedestrian after-thought.

This is a pretty good movie. Vincent Price and Jane Russell are great together, real screen magic. There is also a great character performance by Hoagy Carmicheal as the piano player Happy. This movie can be a little long and tedious at some parts, but the "chase" scene at the end is great! Therefore, I give this movie an 8/10.