She Loved a Fireman

The only thing worth watching in She Loved a Fireman is Ann Sheridan, and it's really too bad for this movie's sake that she's hardly in it. Instead we get a too-large dose of Dick Foran. Blah.

While watching this movie I couldn't help but think why on Earth would someone like Ann fall for a guy like this? It reminded me of a couple of Priscilla Lane movies where she gets stuck with another Warner Brothers buffoon Wayne Morris.

I'm just glad that both Ann and Priscilla got to work with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant and James Cagney. It definitely made doing movies like this more tolerable knowing that better things were on the horizon.

Bookie and ward heeler Dick Foran needs to lay low, so he joins the fire department and clashes with his captain, Robert Armstrong. Armstrong's sister, Ann Sheridan -- the 'she in the title, I guess -- begin a love affair despite Armstrong's approval.... at least until Eddie Acuff is laid up i hospital due to Foran's negligence. Can Foran even stay in the fire department? Can he redeem himself?

Foran sings one song at the beginning and resists efforts to cajole him into warbling elsewhere in this tale of a guy who joins some branch of public service for the wrong reasons and learns the right ones along the way. There's an extensive fire sequence which looks like a lot of library footage and miniature work that's well edited by Thomas Pratt.

I have to second that first assessment I read. Ann Sheridan IS the only reason to watch this. However, it is also the reason TO watch it. Ann Sheridan might be the most underrated actress in motion picture history. She is always worth watching. Anything and everything she does is worth watching. This was made before she was being given significant roles which all changed with the James Cagney/Pat O'Brien classic, "Angels with Dirty Faces". That performance brought to the attention of Hollywood that she was much more than a pretty face. The three of them teamed up again in "Torrid Zone" and by then she was coming into her own. She had a tremendous off screen brother/sister repoire with Humphrey Bogart from their film "San Quentin". Although the media has consistently reminded everyone of Betty Grable as a pin-up during WWII, Ann Sheridan was right there with her.

One of the things that left me speechless with She Loved A Fireman was the notion that Dick Foran could get a firefighting job through political connections. Which he tries with Captain Robert Armstrong at first which turns off Armstrong naturally. I suppose back in the day you could. Now they demand quite a bit mire professionalism.

She Loved A Fireman came right off the Warner Brothers assembly line and has the look of a Cagney/O'Brien project and that's whom it might have been meant for at one time. Foran's the wise guy who gets on Armstrong's bad side at the same time he's courting Armstrong's sister Ann Sheridan. You don't need a road map tosee where this goes.

She Loved A Fireman also has Veda Ann Borg a plus for any movie and some nice firefighting sequences The stuntmen earned their pay here.

Wonder what a present day firefighter might think?

Dick Foran--more famous (or infamous) for playing singing cowboys--plays a wise-ass who joins the fire department to show a fireman he doesn't like how easy the job is. Robert Armstrong plays the fireman in question, and he does what he can with it. Ann Sheridan is Armstrong's sister, who Foran is interested in, and Armstrong doesn't want him near her. Sheridan shows the warm, easygoing but sexy personality she used to great effect later in her career, even though she only has a fairly small part here. This is strictly a bottom-of-the-bill quickie, directed by John Farrow who went on to bigger and better things, as did Sheridan. Foran didn't, pretty much staying in the "B" rut for the rest of his career. He's supposed to be a ladies man here, but he just doesn't pull it off, coming across as a conceited, arrogant jackass. Sheridan sparkles in a small part, and Armstrong is always interesting to watch. Unfortunately, the picture isn't. If you're an Ann Sheridan fan you'll want to see this. If you're not, you won't.