heathentart If you adore Red Skelton... If you adore Eleanor Powell... If you adore Swing music and ballads... If you enjoy just kicking back and letting the experience take hold...,This is a terrific movie to enjoy with a bowl of popcorn. It's especially good when it's on TCM because there are no nasty cuts or commercials.It's fluff, make no mistake. No Tarantino gore, no Stone conspiracies, no angst... just pure fun watching some of the best talent Hollywood ever had.Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Eberly, Helen O'Connell for the music. Eleanor Powell's magnificent dancing, Red Skelton's brilliant slapstick and his heart-felt sweetness. Then there's the rest of the cast - Thurston Hall, Sam Levene, John Hodiak, and Richard Ainley as Larry West, for whom this would be his last picture.The plot has its nuttier moments, none of it meant to be taken seriously. It has plenty of eye-appeal in the costumes (magnificent gowns) created by Irene Sharaff, inarguably one of the greats in the history of design. There are jewels to glitter and shine and, if they were fakes, they were great fakes.The plot gives Red Skelton plenty of opportunity to do what he did best. Just check out the "beard" scene - you'll know what I mean.OK, so it ain't "Gone With The Wind," or "Of Human Bondage," but it's not supposed to be, even with the Civil War play going on.One of the funniest parts for me was the sound effects guy doing the "hoofbeats" with the coconut shells, even though YOU know that the sound was being made by a Foley guy in post production. But it's a sound made within a picture by someone outside a picture... ahhh, now I'm confusing myself, and probably you, poor reader.Leave your troubles behind. Tune out the kids, the phone, the interruptions, the beds can be made later. Have fun!

edwagreen Only the musical number by the fabulous Dorsey band as well as the playing of Ms. Scott and wonderful singing by Lena Horne are about the only 2 saving graces of this rather silly film.The trouble here is the far too many sub-plots. We have Red Skelton pursuing entertainer Eleanor Powell. She marries him when she discovers infidelity on the part of her boyfriend. A dancer with a pants presser? Sounds silly enough but they don't take the plot far enough. Instead, we have John Hodiak as a player in a show who is really a Nazi saboteur ready to blow up the theater area which is next to some important valuables.Some of the Skelton-Powell skits are way overdone.While we may have needed films like this in war-time, some of this is just too silly to imagine.

Robert J. Maxwell Relaxed and enjoyable musical comedy. (There are some nefarious Nazis here with evil plans but forget them.) It's not Red Skelton's funniest comedy but he's still pretty amusing as his usual tall hick, with his goofy smile, falling over chairs, a pants-presser who impersonates someone else and gets rattled when threatened with exposure.The musical numbers are pretty well done and efficiently integrated into the plot -- direction by Vincent Minnelli. Eleanor Powell is the major musical star and her tap dancing is so vigorous, and her body so limber and supple, and the tempo so fast, that just watching her spins for thirty seconds gave me chest pains.We are given an extended version of the song "Star Eyes". It was a big hit during the war years. The lyrics are loony, but the song is pretty and amenable to all kinds of variations, as the film demonstrates. It's still part of the Great American Songbook. You can catch it on the occasional recent CD if you keep your ears open. Nick Brignola did it on baritone sax some years ago. The version in the film is of the period, with Helen O'Connell and Ray Eberle, with Jimmy Dorsey's orchestra.Some of the jokes may get by younger viewers -- that is, younger than about 60. Red Skeleton is listening to a recording by Jimmy Dorsey at a shop window. He turns to the man standing next to him and makes some complimentary remark about Jimmy Dorsey. The man makes a snotty comment and walks away. The man is Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy's brother, and the two were notorious rivals at the time.Someone pointed out in another comment that this was an updating of a Buster Keaton movie and I can believe it because Keaton's influence seems apparent in some scenes. (Skeleton trying to lift the limp body of the unconscious Eleanor Powell and stretch it out on the bed.) Keaton was gag adviser on another Red Skeleton comedy, "A Southern Yankee", and turned some of the scenes (eg., a dentist's chair) into comic gems."Star Eyes" was nothing more than ordinary pop music at the time. Whatever happened to vernacular music? Now I have to listen to some gangsta who can't sing threaten to wrench my head off and pour beer down my neck cavity. (Sob.) Where did it all go?

jwtinsley No one seems to point out that his film is a remake of an earlier film Buster Keaton made for MGM titled "Spite Marriage", with many of the visual gags pulled directly from that earlier film with almost no changes. So as well as Red Skelton did in this, an earlier genius had done it first. Many of the best sight gags were lifted note-for-note from Keaton. The two films differ greatly in their sub-plots, but the core premise is the same. If you liked this movie, you should seek out the earlier film; a lot of it is genuinely funny. Although not Keaton at his peak (he was hampered by the MGM-imposed studio system), any Keaton is worth seeing.