St. Louis Blues

The film has an interesting and original setting, ie, on a river-boat in the 1800s/early 1900s and has two very good female singers in Dorothy Lamour and Maxine Sullivan. We also get an amusing Jessie Ralph (Tibbie) as the cigar-smoking matriarch of the boat.

Unfortunately, the musical numbers are a bit of a let-down although sung very well. Lamour gets slow numbers to perform which is a total waste. We needed her voice to carry out some swinging numbers. Sullivan gets some blues numbers to sing which she is obviously suited to and swings things a little in a cool version of that Scottish standard "You'll take the High Road and I'll take the Low Road". The story is ok but the boat's captain Lloyd Nolan (Dave) isn't a very pleasant character to identify with for a leading man. He is such a Humphrey Bogart character and I suspect Bogie nicked Nolan's style after watching this film.

For the story, Lamour runs away from her success as a sarong-wearing singer and her manager Jerome Cowan (DeBrett) to perform on a river boat but she is under contract and he tracks her down. Cliff Nazarro (Shorty) is along for the ride to do his double-talking thing but the film never really sets alight. It's ok. Do you think Lamour ends up singing in a sarong? Take a guess.

One of the more memorable scenes sees Ralph giving Lamour a rub-down. Just check out the look of determined glee on Ralph's face as she carries out her massage. Creepy. What was all that about! I think we can all guess. I assume she went to have a smoke on one of her cigars after that interaction.