She Loves Me Not

I thought this movie was going to be really cute, given the synopsis. Miriam Hopkins is a witness to a murder, so in order to hide herself from the mafia, she dresses in drag at a college fraternity. Looking back, maybe my synopsis-judgment skills weren't working very well.

She Loves Me Not isn't the cutest movie in the world, and it wasn't half as cute as I thought it was going to be. It's always fun to see Miriam Hopkins early in her career, prancing around in her underwear, but most of the plot and gags rely on the audience being too stunned by her near-nudity to pay attention to anything else. For example, she sits Bing Crosby down and gives him a 1934 version of a lap dance, and all he does is scold her and run out of the room. The screenwriters could have given him so many funny jokes during that scene!

Also, Miriam's character is very clearly written to be a nightclub floozie who has no shot at getting the guy. Bing serenades Kitty Carlisle with "Love in Bloom" and never really looks twice at Miriam; therefore, there's no tension in the plot. So, unless you want to see Miriam Hopkins in her underwear, you don't have to watch this one. There are plenty of other movies where you can catch her in her skivvies, or less.

One of the many little 1930's musical comedies that Bing made in his first decade in films, not the best, to me that would be 'Sing You Sinners' a few years later, but this is still enjoyable fare. I disagree with another reviewer who claimed Bing had no sex appeal, and I think a couple of million girls from the era would too. He certainly had a great sense of comedy timing, and was a more than competent actor. But, most people went to hear him sing, and when he does he never disappoints, Although 'Love in Bloom' is the big hit from this movie, I like 'I'm Humming, I'm Whistling and I'm Singing' best, no one could put over a rhythm song as well as Bing! Thankfully, Universal have finally released this film on DVD, so I applaud them, but they still have a few to go from Bing's 30's catalogue!

Dancer Miriam Hopkins is doing her specialty in a night club when a gangster is shot right in front of her. An acquaintance of hers was jailed as a witness for six months, so she takes the first train out. This puts her in Princeton. There she barges in on senior Bing Crosby. With his pal, Edward Nugent, he hides her and tries to get her a job. Nugent's father is George Barbier, the head of a major movie studio, with a major flop on his hands. With his publicity man, Lynn Overman, they decide to sign Miss Hopkins to a contract and make her the most famous woman in America. Meanwhile, back at Princeton, Bing falls in love with Kitty Carlisle (in her screen debut), the daughter of dean Henry Stephenson. Bing, besides being pre-med, is a songwriter, and they croon "Love in Bloom." But Princeton can't have women in the boy's rooms.

There are a lot of moving parts in this musical comedy directed by Elliot Nugent. Miss Hopkins is slightly miscast as a nitwit -- they wanted Marion Davies for the role -- but she does a mean tap. It's more frantic than funny, but it seems to have done very well at the box office.

Did any movie idol have less sex appeal than Bing Crosby? (Okay, Robert Young comes close.) What a problem the studios had with Bing--that voice that drove the women mad, combined with an attitude toward women that could best be described as "courteous." Unlike Fred Astaire, the diffident Bing was not lucky enough to find a partner to give the act sex appeal--at least, not until he teamed up with Bob Hope, whose inept wolfishness made Bing's coldness look cool.

In this picture, as in Here Is My Heart the same year, the studio (why?) gave him Kitty Carlisle, the ponderous actress who acts comedy by making like a middle-aged good sport who's being good-naturedly informal with the kids. Even the number Bing adopted for his theme song, "Love in Bloom," doesn't whip up a romantic mood, even when Bing and Kitty, weirdly, sing it as two disembodied heads in a cloudy sky. But a youthful is rather foreclosed by a star who, more than ten years too old for his role, looks like a college professor rather than the undergrad he is supposed to be.

Kitty is further minimised by being sited outside the main plot, one that might have been the inspiration for Some Like It Hot. Miriam Hopkins, as a nightclub dancer (and can she shake a leg! who knew?), witnesses a gangland rubout and, fleeing the gangsters who want to do away with her, ends up at Princeton, where Bing helpfully cuts off her hair and gives her boys' clothes to hide in. Miriam turns out to be the most ungrateful damsel in distress ever rescued, constantly lying, mischief-making, and rather undermining the idea of hiding out by becoming a glutton for publicity. But her antics, rather than pepping up the show, fade away in this staid atmosphere.

Thirties character comedians Warren Hymer and Lynne Overman have some funny business, but the pace sags and the dialogue lacks invention. Fortunately, though, Bing ends up with Kitty without having to kiss her. How he must have been relieved!

Miriam Hopkins is the whole show here as a nightclub singer who witnesses a murder and gets out of town. She ends up in Princeton, NJ and is taken in by students, Bing Crosby and Edward Nugent. They cut her hair and pass her off as Crosby's nephew. Meanwhile Bing falls for the dean's daughter, Kitty Carlisle and they sing "Love in Bloom" and "Straight from the Heart." Lots of plot twists but the film runs out of steam before it's over, still it's fun.

From the hotcha number Hopkins sings and dances during the opening credits to the sequence where the movie studio head and crew descend on Princeton to put Hopkins in the movies, she proves herself a delightful comedienne.

Despite first billing, Crosby has little to do outside of his songs. Hopkins steals every scene she's in (not unusual) and is terrific in the singing and dancing numbers. Carlisle is solid in her second film and so is the underrated Nugent.

Henry Stephenson, Henry Kolker, George Barbier, Warrem Hymer, Lynne Overman, Judith Allen, Maude Turner Gordon, Vince Barnett co-star.

Basically remade in 1942 with Judy Canova and again in 1955 with Betty Grable.