Cuban Pete

Radio host Jacqueline DeWit hears a record recorded by some guy in Cuba called Desi Arnaz and insists on having him on her show. He does want to, so ad agency assistant Joan Shawlee flies down to Cuba, charms Arnaz and his orphaned niece Beverly Simmons, and the whole show go to New York. But Miss DeWit doesn't just want him on her show, she insists on singing with him, which means cutting the King Sisters.

That's the pointless plot of this cheap and fast (60 minutes) Universal musical. It serves merely to get you from one musical number to next, and some of them are pretty good. Ethel Smith plays the organ; the King Sisters sing "Cielito" translated into English; and Arnaz performs several of the numbers that he did on I LOVE LUCY, and those are the reasons to see this movie. I love the TV show, but Arnaz tamped down the energy on the musical numbers to appease the TV censors. Here he performs them with an energy that is often fiercely sexual.

The copy I looked at was in visually poor condition, even though the soundtrack was just fine. Miss Shawlee is surprisingly mild for anyone who knows her from her dimwits in Billy Wilder movies. Pedro de Cordoba has a small but charming role early on. It's not much of a movie, but when Arnaz is singing and dancing, it's very good.