La Belle de l'Alaska

Colorful minor musical is of interest mostly as a chance to get a glimpse of Gypsy Rose Lee in one of her few movie appearances. She offers a pleasant performance, nothing special but full of personality. It also has some eye popping costumes in vivid Technicolor and Gypsy's hair is done up in some truly gravity defying styles throughout. Dinah Shore doesn't make much of an impression, her high sweet thin voice is put to service on some forgettable songs but in the acting department she is woeful. Fortunately the supporting cast of old pros is there to prop up the shaky leads with Florence Bates, usually cast as stuffy matrons, fun as Gypsy's flashy traveling companion.

Although the plot of Belle of the Yukon is so tired that its not worth recounting (but isn't this true of most old musicals?), this gorgeously technicolored musical/western has some pleasing elements of interest for fans of 1940's nostalgia. The young, brunette Dinah Shore (with an eye-poppingly voluptuous figure) sings beautifully two lovely standards, "Like Someone in Love," and "Sleighride in July." What a warm, pleasing voice she had. One of the all-time great singers. Her blonde, blue-eyed love interest, William Marshall, is so ridiculously pretty that he looks like a vintage comic book hero come to life. Gypsy Rose Lee is relaxed and fun with her foot-high pompadours and Belle Epoque gowns by Don Loper, and a very handsome Randolph Scott is clearly enjoying himself.

This is a weird Randolph Scott film, as it's not exactly a western (it's set in the Yukon, not the American west) and practically nothing really happens in the film! Seriously, it's a nice assemblage of characters and they act and interact but there really is very little tension and not much of a consistent plot. Odd, but still likable enough.

Aside from Scott, the film has a good collection of character actors. Guinn Williams plays a typical affable idiot (like he played in almost all his films), though where his character goes at the end of the film was VERY unlike his other roles. Dinah Shore is on hand to sing a few songs. Charles Winninger plays the usual Winninger type character. Robert Armstrong is kind of a villain....sort of. Now here's the odd one--Gypsy Rose Lee (the famous stripper) is Scott's love interest, though in this film she keeps her clothes on and shows no signs of her former career.

The plot, for what it is, is about all the characters. Scott, in an odd move, isn't even the main focus of the film--he's just there. While I could try to explain them and what they did, it seemed like the film makers just told everyone to wing it! There is some sort of plot near the very end about stolen gold, but it occupies very little of the film.

Overall, watchable and not a bad film...just not a really good one either.

Supposedly set in the old Klondike at the time of the gold rush; we get a jokey opening narration similar to the prologue three years earlier to 'Louisiana Purchase' (1941) advising us in advance that we will be getting glossy escapism, not gritty realism. We see little of the film's hinterland setting beyond a brief shot of what looks like a black & white photograph of a couple of mountains; and the story could just as easily have been set in a speakeasy during prohibition or a contemporary New York nightclub. However, 'Belle of Chicago' or 'Belle of Brooklyn' wouldn't have had quite the same ring - or accommodated Don Loper's colossal saloon set in which most of the action takes place; and which along with his costumes and choreography (dressed in Technicolor by veteran cameraman Ray Rennahan) look as if they consumed about half the film's budget. All those chorus girls in glossy red lipstick flinging their legs in the air would also have been more likely to have encountered problems with the Hays Office in a contemporary setting.

No one character ever seems to be the focus of the film; but being the tallest - as well as being Randolph Scott - a smiling Scott just about qualifies as the film's central hero. Although in the title role, Gypsy Rose Lee functions more as Dinah Shore's female buddy; and with their long faces, matching blood red lipstick, alarmingly corseted dresses and vertical hairstyles could pass for sisters. The 'action' tends to consist mainly of the two girls singing about their burgeoning romantic passions, until there is finally a conclusion appropriate to a western when Robert Armstrong (who alone appears to be acting in something more rugged) organises a bank robbery to end the film with something passing for action.

Some of the sets are sufficiently stylised to have possibly helped ten years later to inspire those for 'Red Garters'; or Vienna's saloon in 'Johnny Guitar'. The film's most eye-popping use of colour is saved for the final scene when the chorus are shot from below energetically dancing the Can-Can, although their pale green dresses flicking about their rose red petticoats manage to look remarkably like costumes from a two-colour rather than a three-strip Technicolor production.

Seriously, the costuming in this film is over-the-top but inspired. It helps that it's in brilliant Technicolor.

But this film is plagued by a story that is uneven. And by overacting.

The story takes place in the Yukon and features Randolph Scott as a conman gone straight. Gypsy Rose Lee is the new featured performer in his saloon. Dinah Shore comes up short (acting and singing) as the featured songstress. She may be the only one who underacts.

You might be able to figure out who double-crosses who, but I'm guessing you will eventually give up because you don't care. Better to sit back and enjoy the fashion.