Classic Film Alert: The Strawberry Blonde
Turner Classic Movies is featuring actress Rita Hayworth this month, and there's a very good one coming up tomorrow.
At 11 a.m. EDT, Hayworth stars as the title character in Raoul Walsh's delightful 1941 comedy The Strawberry Blonde. Set in Gay '90s New York City, the film features excellent performances by Jimmy Cagney, Olivia DeHavilland, Hayworth, Alan Hale, Jack Carson, and George Tobias. Plus, if you look quickly, you'll see future TV Superman George Reeves as a snippy college boy.
The Strawberry Blonde is a charming, heartfelt comedy that tells the story of a feisty New Yorker (Cagney) whose pursuit of lofty ambitions brings him very low, but who finds that the life he settled for, with a seemingly second-best girl (marrying spunky Amy, played by de Havilland, instead of the beautiful Virginia Brush, played by Hayworth) is far, far better than the one of which he had dreamed.
This is a classic film comedy, funny and meaningful.
Highly recommended.
Comments
I remember seeing the film on TV years ago, and also seeing another film (not a musical) with an almost identical plot. This led me to believe The Strawberry Blonde was a re-make of an earlier film. Am I mixed up? (I usually am, especially with regard to old memories.)
Posted by: Lars Walker | April 11, 2007 08:33 AM
Lars, TSB is not the musical version. The studio, Warner Bros, made a musical version starring Dennis Morgan and Janis Paige in 1949. It was called One Sunday Afternoon, and was likewise directed by Raoul Walsh. TSB is a far better movie, exemplified by its superb cast.
Posted by: S. T. Karnick | April 11, 2007 11:05 AM
Sounds right. Thanks.
Posted by: Lars Walker | April 11, 2007 12:29 PM
Dear Mr. Karnick:
Am I mistaken, or did Hollywood go through a nostalgia phase in the forties, when the Second World War dominated everyone's thoughts and an escape to the idylls of the Gay Nineties was just the ticket for escapist entertainment?
Warner Brothers seemed to produce more films of that type, or am I mistaken again? I'm pretty sure I saw Bugs Bunny dancing to tunes of that era.
THE GREAT GATSBY film was expected to generate a Twenties Craze that never materialized. Given the rampant cynicism, the unwholesome attitudes that suffuse even the most innocent-seeming projects from Tinseltown, and the stranglehold that political correctness exerts in "Horrorwood", do you think anything like THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE could ever emerge from any major studio again?
Respectfully,
Mike (not Linda)
Posted by: Mike (not Linda) | April 11, 2007 05:54 PM