A real dog, independently made by Gregory Ratoff but released by Columbia, from a script that could have been written on the back of an envelope, about Broadway producer William Gaxton trying to keep Mae West in his show, which is actually a Latin American revue featuring lots of Xavier Cugat. Mae is, as many have noted, allotted insufficient screen time, and when she's on, her lines mostly thud; plus, she looks on the zaftig side, and understandably bored. William Gaxton was a huge star on the stage, originating roles in such notable musicals as "A Connecticut Yankee," "Anything Goes," and "Of Thee I Sing," but he's a blank on film; he's somewhat better, in a similar role, in "Best Foot Forward" the same year at MGM. Victor Moore, a frequent stage partner of Gaxton's, does his usual bumbling- inarticulate-hick thing that some people find charming, and sings an absolutely dreadful song about victory gardens that can't even have had much impact in 1943. The songs are by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn and other hands, but they're dull, and the supporting cast is no- name, though Lloyd Bridges turns up as the ingenue's GI sweetheart, and Hazel Scott has a couple of specialty numbers that show her off to decent advantage. There were lots of barely- plotted B wartime musicals such as this, but most don't get shown, either through rights tangles or sheer disinterest. This one shows what a haphazard genre it was at the time.
Review of The Heat's On
