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This film, sadly, is a dud, an attempt by a group of talented people, some imported, others not, to imitate a big Hollywood-style musical in Great Britain, year 1951. As always the basic problem starts with the cliched Val Guest script-an improbable backstage plot full of silly misunderstandings RKO would have rejected as unbelievable back in the Thirties There are some decent people in the cast, among them little and very pretty Vera Ellen who could dance and act-her singing was dubbed-and the very likeable, ever charming David Niven, a man who do no wrong no matter what script he was handed. But these two, however hard they try, can do nothing to spring life into a stillborn production burdened by very poor songs, even poorer choreography, and uninspired direction by Bruce Humberstone of Charlie Chan fame. Vera Ellen was one of those very gifted performers like Cyd Charisse who needed a stronger co-star, an Astaire or Kelly, to carry the film. Niven was not a song and dance man. He was Niven.

This 1937 Columbia Pictures feature stars Virginia Bruce as the call girl (read hooker) with a heart of gold who falls in love with a rich guy. It's a part many of her contemporaries played and she does more than a decent job with it. The film is a remake of a remake, the nearest predecessor being Frank Capra's superb 1930 version of the story that made a star of Barbara Stanwyck. Bruce is a fine actress, but Barbara makes much more of the part, thanks in no small part to what you could say and do in those pre-Code days. The 1937 sanitized version palls in comparison, partly because it is only staged competently without Capra's flair by Gordon Wiles, a former art director like Mitch Leisen who directed. Melvin Douglas plays the rich boy/ painter to perfection, and is supported by a first rate cast: Reginald Dennis as the playboy drunk and others. Seeing Pert Kelton as the wise cracking, cynical gold digging roommate reminds us why she was Jackie Gleason's first choice for Alice Kramden.

Robert Siodmak (1900-1973) was a member of a group of talented twenty-year-olds, all film fans in Berlin, who made the extremely popular German silent film PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (Menschen am Sonntag) in 1929. Siodmak co-directed the film with Edward Ulmer from a script by Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother Curt. Fred Zimmerman was the assistant camera. When Hitler came to power a few years later, all five were forced to leave their country, in time ending up in Hollywood where all five became directors. Siodmak, perhaps best remembered today for a series of excellent film noirs, is one of the most neglected of the emigre directors, contantly working all over the world, doing every sort of script that came his way from THE KILLERS with Burt Lancaster and the young Ava Gardner to the pirate takeoff THE CRIMSON PIRATE to COBRA WOMAN with Maria Montez. This sentimental tale made at low-budget Republic Pictures in 1943 (but not looking it) is equally well-staged and photographed with a wonderful performance by character actress Mabel Paige as the old lady who befriends a gifted cast that includes young Peter Lawford, the beautiful ingenue Dorothy Morris, and John Craven who had been the original husband in OUR TOWN on Broadway. Siodmak, much like his contemporary, the Hungarian Michael Curtiz, was one of those always-working contract directors who seemed to be able to direct anything and anyone that any studio handed him; especially good with actors, many of his performers were nominated for Oscars. He is unjustly forgotten these days in most books that glorify the golden age of studio product. A master craftsman.