L'Étrangleur

William Wellman, the man who brought you NOTHING SACRED, BEAU GESTE, ROXIE HART, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, A STAR IS BORN, and WINGS, brings you this neglected gem starring the one and only Barbara Stanwyck. Available for some reason in a thousand cheapie video bins for under five bucks, this 91 minute classic B-movie puts the B in sublime. An A-list group decided to adapt Gypsy Rose Lee's exploitation sex - murder - laughs novel for the silver screen, and the sheer joy brought to the tawdry enterprise somehow transmutes the base material - the murder plot was creaky for 1943 - into show-biz gold. When you think of old-fashioned entertainment, you are picturing LADY OF BURLESQUE, in which a maniac is killing the show-girls in a run-down burlesque theater, and a baggy-pants comic steadfastly pursues Barbara Stanwyck with wisecracks and dutch-treat dates. The real stars are the burlesque performers, lovable freaks from the Hollywood gutter spouting a hard-bitten patter with the nano-second timing of people who'd been doing this since their parents dragged them onto the vaudeville stage when they were three. Stanwyck was the only major screen queen from the thirties and forties who specialized in hopelessly vulgar heroines (see STELLA DALLAS and BABY FACE), but here she's the class act because she's the only one not trying to be classy. Her love interest is the wonderful Michael O'Shea, who plays the false nose comedian who falls for Stanwyck. Stanwyck puts a spin on the word "comic" that makes it sound like a four letter word. One scene above all others stakes this movie's claim to greatness - while in the middle of a hoary old comedy sketch, Stanwyck and O'Shea are interrupted by the off-stage wailings of a stripper being beaten up by her thug boyfriend. No one backstage will stop the brutality because they're all scared of the thug, so the onstage performers strike up the band and try to drown out the screams with an up-tempo musical number and improvised jitterbugging. Note, too, the big built blonde with the lisp who declares of the most recent murder "How gruethome!"

Barbara Stanwyck managed to elevate nearly every film and television show she ever did. The earliest film I saw her in was "The Miracle Woman" from 1931. I just saw "Baby Face" and I own copies of "The Thorn Birds", "Stella Dallas" and this film. "Lady of Burlesque" is a wonderful, atmospheric depiction of an bygone era, complete with Stanwyck doing some amazing dance moves. Some people have criticized the music score as being second-rate, but that is what it SUPPOSED to be. Burlesque wasn't Ziegfeld. Men went to see the girls in various stages of undress, not hear Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. The music and the corny jokes were incidental to the "action" on stage, and it was not for nothing that Arthur Lange's musical score was nominated for an Acadamy Award. The mystery story is well-told and the atmosphere is added to by an excellent supporting cast, with Iris Adrian being a standout. After seeing this wonderfully entertaining film you will feel like you have been whisked back in time to an era long-gone.

Did the movies ever produce a trouper more versatile than Barbara Stanwyck, a seasoned pro who not only could do anything handed to her but did them all superlatively well? Her long career encompasses melodramas, weepers, screwball comedy, noir, even Westerns. In Lady of Burlesque she sings, breaks into a variety of dance steps, and even turns a cartwheel (and if a stunt double did it for her, the editing is virtuoso). She's far and away the best thing in the movie, which is saying a lot: Lady of Burlesque is a breakneck carnival ride of a movie.

It's based on The G-String Murders, a light mystery penned by society stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (her own story became legend in Gypsy, and her sister. Baby June, became actress June Havoc). But the mystery emerges late and, like the obligatory love angle, doesn't unduly detract from the movie's main business, which is a salty and affectionate reminiscence of the autumn of vaudeville's ne'er-do-well stepsister, burlesque, set, like all the best show-biz stories, backstage.

William Wellman gets things popping right off the bat, in a Ziegfeld-Follies like number in which one of the prancing chorines keeps trying to blow her Veronica-Lake locks out of her face. Then there's a fast seque into Stanwyck's `Take It Off The E-String (Play It On The G-String),' then upstairs to the horror of a dressing room where the big, pale girls gussy themselves up and rip one another up one side and down the other. Their smart, snapping mouths recall the bitchiest exchanges in Stage Door, another racy peek into stage life after the curtain's rung down (among the grind-house queens are Iris Adrian, Victoria Faust, Janis Carter and Stephanie Bachelor). Another dressing room houses the men – the comics with their wide pants and tiny hats (Pinky Lee among them); Wellman even throws in some of their hoary routines but counterpoints them against offstage action to offset their stale-popcorn fustiness.

Police raids and gangster boyfriends, professional jealousies and box-office worries play as much a role in the movie as a series of ecdysiasts strangled with their own beadwork. With Wellman at the helm and an enviable if not, apart from Stanwyck, especially starry cast, Lady of Burlesque delivers lots more than it promises.

Nothing deep here, but that's good. A light-hearted comedy in the guise of a mystery. Don't expect to be mystified, the "mystery" only serves as a vehicle for the comedy and a rather believable romance. Barbara Stanwyck, though 36 years old, looks much younger. Her part was rather vivacious, risque, and revealing for a 1943 movie. The lady could act!

The image on the DVD is generally very good, but there are several places where a few "frames" are missing, causing disquieting "jumps", but still, a good investment of time, if only to enjoy watching Miss Stanwyck smile and wiggle.

Barbara Stanwyck got to really show her versatility in Lady of Burlesque doing a couple of numbers that did make me wonder why she didn't try to do a full blown musical. Of course she had the best of inspiration in a book that was partially written by the one and only Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy needed a ghostwriter, but she certainly knew the world of burlesque as none other. So with Craig Rice's ghostwriting they fashioned a murder mystery set in the burlesque world. Somebody is killing the strippers at a burlesque theater and Barbara isn't sitting around waiting to be the next victim. With the help of comic Michael O'Shea she's going to find the perpetrator before she gets done in with her G String.

A lovely group of movie queens help Barbara out in this film. Playing some of her peers are Iris Adrian, Gloria Dickson, Marion Martin, Janis Carter, Stephanie Bachelor, and Victoria Faust. Some of these don't make it to the end of the picture.

Playing another of the comics is Pinky Lee who I well remember because I used to watch his kid's television show back in my salad days. Pinky was as frantic as I remember him and he does a mean jitterbug with Stanwyck.

William Wellman as director keeps the pace of things going pretty nicely. And if you're a leg man, this picture will leave you nothing to complain about. As for the murderer, here's a hint, it's roughly the equivalent of the butler doing it.