Vivendo Sem Amor

Virginia Mayo is kaput in Hollywood. Agent and would-be husband Larry Keating persuades her to regain her magic by returning to the Great White Way. Unknown to her, he arranges the financing. But the director is the man who made her a star, and former lover Steve Cochran.

It's a putting-on-a-show musical with a great supporting cast, and choreography by Leroy Prinz. It's certainly engaging, and the songs are good, if not great. One of the problems is Miss Mayo's line readings; she's dull in the emotional speeches, although her legs certainly make up a lot for that. The highlight is the big set number near the end, "Behind the Mask", with Gene Nelson showing off his athleticism. With Frank Lovejoy and Patrice Wymore.

Catherine Terris (Virginia Mayo) is fading from the Hollywood spotlight. She is willing to take bit parts, but her manager Mitchell Parks insists that she gets leads or nothing. Instead, he suggests going back to Broadway and director Rick Sommers (Steve Cochran) who got her a big break. Rick however still holds a grudge after she left him for Hollywood.

This tries to be a look behind the curtain on Broadway. Some of it is reasonable. Some of it is almost insightful. I can do with less song and dance. The actual musical is of no importance. It is the relationship and my personal taste is for them to go their separate ways. This ending is not my preference, but I'm not going to destroy it.

Virginia Mayo is largely associated with lightweight Danny Kaye movies and occasional dramatic roles ('White Heat' and 'The Best Years of Our Lives'). "She's Back on Broadway" is an attempt to star Ms Mayo in a musical with some real substance to it. This movie fails at most of what it sets out to do, but it's an interesting failure with some genuine merit and some good performances.

Several months before starring in "She's Back on Broadway", Virginia Mayo starred in another Warners film which is better than this one: "She's Working Her Way Through College". These two films are not related, but their similar titles and similarity of tone suggest that somebody at Warners was trying to exercise an overall strategy for Mayo's film career.

In "She's Back on Broadway", Mayo plays Catherine Terriss, a Hollywood actress who starred in several movies a while back, but whose film career is now idling. (Ironically, Mayo herself was never as great a star as the character she plays here!) The opening scene grabs our attention, and promises that this will be no typical frothy musical. Catherine is sitting at the pool of her movie-star mansion, reading a newspaper headline about another film actress who has just committed suicide. The other actress was only slightly older than Catherine, with a similar career arc: Catherine tells her manager (the excellent Larry Keating) that she's afraid she'll land up the same way. Desperate to give her career a jolt, she quits Hollywood and returns to where she started: Broadway. Using her own savings, she bankrolls a stage musical and hires big-deal director Rick Sommers to direct it.

Sommers is played by Steve Cochran, an underrated actor who never got the career he deserved ... possibly because Cochran had leading-man looks but his talents were geared more towards character roles. He gives a fine performance in this movie as the dynamic Broadway director, but Cochran is lumbered with some gimmicky dialogue. After giving his cast a spirited pep-talk, he abruptly relaxes and tells them something which contradicts everything he's already said: 'You'll find we're very easily satisfied...' Then, before this can sink in, he straight away changes mood again and barks: '...with perfection! And nothing less!'

Gene Nelson (an ingratiating song-and-dance man whose gymnastic talents were never properly utilised) auditions for a role in the show. He barely sings four bars before Cochran tells him to come back tomorrow '...and bring a pen'. There's an annoying and unfunny running gag about a pawky and untalented young man who auditions as a bass singer, as a baritone, as a tenor ... until Cochran finally casts him in a non-speaking part so he won't show up at the audition for sopranos! I found all of the audition and rehearsal sequences in this film extremely unrealistic.

The problem with "She's Back on Broadway" is that its plot isn't gripping enough to succeed as straight drama, and its songs aren't tuneful enough for this to be more than a sub-average musical. All of the songs are dull and unmemorable. Gene Nelson never gets a chance to cut loose with the spectacular acrobatics he displayed in other films. (I still savour the incredible standing back salto he performed in 'Tea for Two', with its Olympic-class amplitude.) The 'best' song here (not saying much) is 'Breakfast in Bed', a tinkly little ditty performed by Mayo in a ludicrous costume. Steve Condos, formerly of the Condos Brothers, does a jazzy dance number that has him bojangling his way up and down a tiny plywood staircase.

SPOILERS??? COMING. We get a lot of turgid dialogue here about how everybody's career is at stake, and everybody is taking huge risks ... but it's absolutely no surprise at all that the Broadway show is (of course) a huge hit. "She's Back on Broadway" keeps threatening to be something much more substantial than just another let's-put-on-a-show story, but never lives up to the promise of that starkly dramatic first scene. This film is a pleasant time-passer with glimpses of greatness. I'll rate "She's Back on Broadway" 5 out of 10.

"She's Back on Broadway" stars Virginia Mayo, Steve Cochran, Frank Lovejoy, Gene Nelson, and Patrice Wymore.

Mayo is movie star Catherine Terris in a bad career slump, when her agent (Larry Keating) receives an offer for her to star in a Broadway show. Unfortunately, the director of the show is her ex-beau, Gordon Evans (Steve Cochran) - he's bitter and angry with her and makes her life a living hell in the show. She quits in anger, but agrees to go back.

Where to begin with this...well, there was some wonderful dancing by Gene Nelson and by Patrice Wymore. Mayo is lovely, with a beautiful figure, and as an actress, she was fine. Her singing is dubbed by Bonnie Williams. Cochran was so handsome, but as someone pointed out, he had the personality of a tough character actor and the looks of a lead, so he never received the recognition he deserved. Plus he died at 48 years old.

Whenever you know something about a profession and see it portrayed in a movie, there will always be complaints. For the dance auditions, people wore regular clothes and each person came forward and danced whatever routine they wanted to whatever music.

No one ever chose a dance chorus like that - first of all, there's a certain look they're going for; and secondly, everyone wears dance outfits; third, you divide the dancers into groups and give each group the same specific choreography, then weed people out.

Also, you don't hand an unknown a lead on the basis of eight bars and half a script page.

The show itself was awful.

So she's back on Broadway - for her own good, she should have stayed in Hollywood.

Once upon a time a young director played by Steve Cochran took a young lady from the chorus and made her a Broadway star. The two fell in love and it should have been a storybook ending. But the new star left the play after six months and Virginia Mayo found success in Hollywood.

Now with her career slipping Mayo is thinking maybe Broadway will give her another vehicle to revive a now sagging career. At least producer Frank Lovejoy thinks it will if he can only get Cochran back as the director. In any event, She's Back On Broadway.

I counted 25 different songs in the score, some original, some from the considerable library at Warner Brothers, in any event they were kind of lucky to get the plot in. Helping with the musical numbers because God knows Frank Lovejoy and Steve Cochran had little talent in that direction was Gene Nelson who's singing and dancing complemented Mayo.

The story gets the short shrift here as the numbers are just piled in. A pity because Cochran and Mayo should have gotten more non- musical time in She's Back On Broadway.