richspenc
"Bathing beauty" is on my very favorite top five list of Esther Williams films and of Esther's water ballets. I believe this was Esther's second film ever. She appeared once before in an Andy Hardy film with Mickey Rooney looking beautiful as one of his love interests. She is gorgeous here. Esther is just so beautiful, sweet, charming, and graceful. The water ballet here is one of the best of Esther's with the beautiful overhead patterns in the water, the graceful beautiful girls dancing outside of the pool in the background while the beautiful girls in the pool do their water dancing while the beautiful classical music plays, the elaborate underwater spin circles the girls do while Esther swims through them, and the spectacular fountain works in the pool. Then, the story itself is interesting, with Red Skelton being engaged to Esther. Even the first scene by the pool is nice. Then, during Red and Esther's wedding, Red is unfairly set up and made to look like he cheated on Esther. Esther believes it, and flees. She flies back to the east coast to take her old job at a girl's boarding school. Then comes the silly, yet very funny plot of Red enrolling in the girl's school just to try and get back with Esther and convince her he didn't do anything wrong. This all includes some amusing, laugh out loud moments such as Red trying to dance in a pink tutu during ballet class and the hilarious way the ballet teacher treats Red. There's also a neat little number Red does with this cute, petite girl (Jean Porter) from music class "I'll take the high road, you take the low road". The school girls act silly and play different hyjinks, largely on Red, including another funny scene where a few of them are hiding in a closet while Red is in his room with Esther. Through particular circumstances, the scene ends with the three girls and a musician riding out of the closet on a four person bicycle while singing. This is typical great classic comic timing. " Bathing beauty" was great, with the combination of it being sweet, passionate, spectacular, and very funny. Esther was beautiful and charming, as always. This film was pure, Hollywood golden age greatness.
JohnHowardReid
Billed right at the bottom of the official cast list, the lovely Janis Paige has only one line: "And I helped carry them!" Never mind! This is an extremely mindless if extremely colorful musical, hindered rather than helped by some of the now-dated swing music of Harry James and Xavier Cugat – despite Harry Stradling's attractively fluid and silhouette photography during these musical renditions. The movie is also not exactly elevated by the bumbling presence of an inane Red Skelton. Admittedly, Skelton is forced to battle with poor material and mindless routines, but he doesn't have to really plunge into them with such feigned enthusiasm. Fortunately, Skelton more than meets his match with Ann Codee who sparks up what could have been one of the more clichéd and embarrassingly gauche sequences. And after this Codee coda, even the songs seem to improve, particularly James' horn staccato with its imaginative framing shadows. Mr. Skelton's relentless mugging and the no-account histrionics of the French bedroom farce still intrude, but at least the farce is topped by Margaret Dumont. Fortunately, the hick story is got out of the way before the spectacularly costumed water ballet conclusion. Incidentally, Basil Rathbone has a few typical moments as the villain, though not enough to satisfy his fans. All in all, the movie's good moments outweigh its bad, but it's nevertheless a shame that the stupid plot and the boringly gross Mr. Skelton are not up to scratch.
Robert J. Maxwell
Watching this thing -- with Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Harry James, Xavier Cugat, et all -- is like poring over the contents of a time capsule from 1944. My uncle, a professional trumpet player, collected all of Harry James' records. My favorite was "Trumpet Blues." As a kid, I played the old 78 record into oblivion. And I never knew until seeing this that the number was from a movie.Harry James was really distinctive, and a great musician in his own vernacular way. Red Skelton, the central figure, has some amusing moments too, doing pratfalls in a pink tutu, forced into a class in Eurythmics because he's enrolled in a woman's college to be near his wife. ("Eurythmics", meaning something like beautiful movements, was evidently a tough word for the set dressers because they spelled it wrong on the classroom door.) Probably most of the numbers will be familiar, at least to the more perspicacious of modern audience members. Not just "Trumpet Blues" but a couple of numbers con sabor Latino, a medley of waltzes while we watch a bevy of dolls in synchronized swimming -- not nearly as smutty as Busby Berkeley's numbers, sad to say. And then, at the climax, there is Esther Williams doing her thing over, under, and around soaring water fountains in a proper exhibition of the height of vulgarity. The height, not the depth. This Philistine depravity is exhilarating.It's cheerful. It's colorful. It will be shown to the members of our Armed Forces overseas, compliments of the Motion Picture Assocation, and it has Basil Rathbone struggling valiantly with a light-hearted comic role.What's not to like?
Nazi_Fighter_David
One MGM musical of the time launched a career that flourished for the balance of the decade
A champion swimmer and a tall, strikingly pretty woman, Esther Williams had played small roles in two MGM films when she was starred in "Bathing Beauty." She played a swimming teacher at a girls' school whose husband (Red Skelton) enrolls at the school to be near her...The plot was merely an excuse for knockabout antics by Skelton and especially for Williams' aquacades
The pattern was fixed for the rest of the series of popular light musicals she starred in: Williams as a smiling mermaid moving balletically underwater to the strains of a pleasing melody
Bathing Beauty's finale is a lavish water spectacle with the star as the focal point of intricate underwater formations
AD
