June 10, 2015

Ralph Meeker looks great. He tended toward puffiness in the all too few movies he made after the great "Kiss Me Deadly." Here he is trim and does a good job (with little to work with.) Keenan Wynn is all right. He played sidekicks -- sort of the Tony Randall of the 1950s.

Jane Russell wears the title outfit. She got a bad rap as an actress. She was hilarious in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" and very convincing in her adventure/thrillers with Robe… read the rest.

Ralph Meeker looks great. He tended toward puffiness in the all too few movies he made after the great "Kiss Me Deadly." Here he is trim and does a good job (with little to work with.) Keenan Wynn is all right. He played sidekicks -- sort of the Tony Randall of the 1950s.

Jane Russell wears the title outfit. She got a bad rap as an actress. She was hilarious in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" and very convincing in her adventure/thrillers with Robert Mitchum.

Here she is OK. Her acting is OK, that is. But she's supposed to be a movie star at her peak and this is a little hard to buy. I remember her TV ads in which she spoke of "us full-figured gals." These came a couple decades after "The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown." But the nightgown, and everything she wears, looks like a maternity frock. She looks big here. In the beginning of the film she wears a long blonde wig. It is monumentally unbecoming. She looks better when she takes it off.

Still, the movie is a disappointment. It's always a treat to see Meeker. And the supporting cast comprises familiar faces and is amusing. But the movie is a misfire. Russell and Meeker have no particular chemistry. It isn't touching. And it isn't really very funny, director Taurog notwithstanding.

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