JohnHowardReid I'm giving this disappointing movie a "4", because I did enjoy the Technicolor sequence. It looks really great on the Warner DVD too. The only problem with it, of course, is that on original release (theater or DVD), by the time good old Technicolor comes on, most customers would either have taken "The Ice Follies" ("folly" is right!) out of their DVD players and thrown it away, or if they were silly enough to patronize the movie back in 1939 -- despite the warnings by contemporary critics -- have left the theater in disgust.Actually, if you expect a movie to be bad, it usually turns out to be not quite as bad you expected. I expected this one to be real, real, real bad, but it's only real bad. Joan Crawford often said that the script by Leonard Praskins, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf was a load of rubbish, but I wonder why she allowed director Reinhold Schunzel to think it was great stuff. I would have put him wise and suggested that the only way to play the movie was to send it up.It amazes me that Jimmy Stewart managed to survive this outing. Fortunately for Lew Ayres, his role is small enough to be insignificant and he was soon to find his real home in a certain very popular "B" series in which he played Doctor James Kildare! (Of course the real star of that series was Lionel Barrymore, but you can't have everything!)

blanche-2 He puts on his own ice show.Joan Crawford was 34 (according to her) when she made this film with 31-year-old James Stewart. She would do some terrific films over the next five years before Louis B kicked her out of MGM, and she bounced back immediately at Warner's. It's a credit to her that after a dog like this, she was able to show her face at the studio. This is the film that she was making at the beginning of "Mommie Dearest," by the way."Ice Follies of 1939" was an attempt, I think, to cash in on the interest in figure skating and ice shows, thanks to that little Norwegian, Sonja Henie, who was making skating films over at 20th Century Fox.The story concerns a young couple, Larry McCall and Mary McKay (Stewart and Crawford) who work in a show as ice skaters along with Stewart's old partner Eddie (Lew Ayres). When they get fired, Mary knows it's because she's not very good, and she's holding Larry back. What Larry wants is to produce and direct his own ice show. When their car is hit by a film casting agent (Lewis Stone), Mary, now Mrs. Hall, goes personally to collect the money he owes them for the car. She pretends to have no interest in films and gets a contract for $75 a week. Mary starts moving up in the film world, and Larry leaves, not wanting her to support him. He says that when they've both made it, they can get back together. That proves a little more difficult than they expected.There are two HUGE skating segments in this film, and there is some terrific skating. The thing is, after watching the film for a while, where there has been just a bit of skating, it's a surprise that these scenes go on and on. The script itself is completely formulaic and predictable and not worthy of any of the stars.Stewart and Crawford don't make the best couple. She's too sophisticated for him and, as a strong woman, she was better with a tough type like Gable. Well, they were under contract and made what they were handed. One of the negatives of being with a studio.

mukava991 This harmless piece of fluff is moderately interesting for reasons having nothing to do with its intentions, which must have been to tap into the lucrative ice skating fan base that was packing theatres to see Sonia Henie in 20th Century Fox features at the time. This opus does have a stellar cast (Joan Crawford, James Stewart, Lew Ayres, Lewis Stone) all at their best even though utterly wasted and a vivid Technicolor ice show sequence at the end in which we get to see the above-mentioned personages in color. It is also a way to satisfy the curiosity of MOMMIE DEAREST viewers who have always wondered what FOLLIES was about since it figures in the plot of that biopic. Well, it's about nothing much and was a good example of why Joan Crawford's career wasn't a bed of roses, even though she triumphed in THE WOMEN the same year. She's actually quite good in this, playing a nice girl who chooses marital bliss over movie stardom. For half the movie she is coiffed in an unusually severe and darkly tinted manner which accentuates the severity of her features, giving her a rather cruel and drawn appearance. In some of these scenes she strongly resembles Merle Oberon. Stewart gets a chance to practice pratfalls and inventive prop handling and excels at both. At one point after his character hears joyous news, he does a somersault from a chair onto a bed and back onto the floor like a skilled acrobat. He was a consummate actor even then.

tjonasgreen Widely considered the worst film Joan Crawford made at MGM (it must have been a low point for James Stewart too, yet it forms no part of the lore about his long career) this is a real curiosity. It has the sort of B-movie plot Sonja Henie was getting in her hugely successful skating pictures at Fox, but this one is done with an A-budget. And because the stars can't skate, it is essentially two pictures in one -- a skating 'spectacular' featuring anonymous athletes which prefigures the ice-skating arena shows we know so well, and a soap opera about a two career couple who can't make their marriage work.Forget trying to figure out how a major film from the most meticulous of studios could be such a hodgepodge. Simply go with it and happily register its many lapses in taste and logic. In the early scenes Crawford is actually more relaxed and likable than in other pictures from this period, though this changes once her character signs a movie contract. The idea of Crawford playing a star makes perfect sense and one wonders why no one thought of it before. At last her artificiality and posturing has a logical explanation. (But can someone explain why some of Max Steiner's score from GONE WITH THE WIND is played during Joan's drunk scene?) And in gorgeous three-strip Technicolor she looks at once terrifically glamorous and hard as nails. This hardness and the fact that it exposed her age is surely the reason she never gets a color closeup. And though she is a small part of the color portion of the film, she manages to wear no less than three Adrian outfits, the most striking being a brilliant green ensemble with gold and silver embroidery (the 18th Century court outfits the extras wear must have been recycled from MARIE ANTOINETTE).Assuming Crawford had a choice, why did she do this film? To branch out to a broader family audience than she had before? To cash in on a popular box office fad? Or, at a time when Jeanette Macdonald was still considered Louis B. Mayer's favorite, did Crawford relish getting the Technicolor operetta treatment? Joan took singing lessons for years (her thin, unpleasant voice is briefly heard) and Macdonald had already been in one color film and was about to do another at a time when Technicolor carried the prestige of novelty and expense. Whatever the reason, it must have caused general hilarity in Hollywood -- one can imagine Billy Haines calling up George Cukor to chuckle over the latest bomb Joan had been saddled with. Only Sonja Henie can have been jealous over this turkey.