This film genuinely brought tears to my eyes at one point, and it is quite funny, although some of the gags are milked for too long (example: crawling around on Don's dressing-room floor). I felt that it had potential which was perhaps ill-served in this case by a rather pedestrian musical accompaniment -- the picture needs broad burlesque emotion for the broad acting and appropriate showtunes for the stage/blackface moments, rather than the inoffensive steady vamp which was what we were getting. And it took quite a long time to get going; the gags at the beginning ("Broadway runs North and South and wild"?!) went down completely flat.
Bessie Love is very good. I found Johnnie Walker a little nondescript, without either the charisma or the charm implied by his casting as a major Broadway star; it's hard to warm to Don Wilson, and I didn't care what happened to him as I did what became of Ginger Bolivar. Lionel Belmore has an effective supporting role as her Falstaffian father, a bellowing ham actor of the old school.
The plot hinges around a somewhat improbable misidentification, as Don courts the girl in two personae at the same time, but even in intimate moments she never notices their resemblance; however, in film terms one more or less has to take this as given. (I can't help feeling that while Don might have pulled it off on stage from a distance during one rehearsal, he was really pushing his luck!) The final denouement, though, I found hard to swallow -- again, I don't think Johnnie Walker has the charm to manage this convincingly. Perhaps here too the trouble was that I found Ginger a lot more appealing than her beau.
On reflection I feel that with a different leading man and more responsive accompaniment I would probably have liked this film better; I'm rating it six out of ten ('inoffensive; nothing special') to reflect my actual average experience, however.
Bessie Love is very good. I found Johnnie Walker a little nondescript, without either the charisma or the charm implied by his casting as a major Broadway star; it's hard to warm to Don Wilson, and I didn't care what happened to him as I did what became of Ginger Bolivar. Lionel Belmore has an effective supporting role as her Falstaffian father, a bellowing ham actor of the old school.
The plot hinges around a somewhat improbable misidentification, as Don courts the girl in two personae at the same time, but even in intimate moments she never notices their resemblance; however, in film terms one more or less has to take this as given. (I can't help feeling that while Don might have pulled it off on stage from a distance during one rehearsal, he was really pushing his luck!) The final denouement, though, I found hard to swallow -- again, I don't think Johnnie Walker has the charm to manage this convincingly. Perhaps here too the trouble was that I found Ginger a lot more appealing than her beau.
On reflection I feel that with a different leading man and more responsive accompaniment I would probably have liked this film better; I'm rating it six out of ten ('inoffensive; nothing special') to reflect my actual average experience, however.