drednm
Joined May 2000
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drednm's rating
Alas, The Desert Bride (1928) just isn't very good despite having the wonderful Betty Compson as its star.
Standard tale of the Middle East. In a French colony (probably Syria) Compson is visiting her military uncle (Edward Martindel) and meets the "dashing" Captain Deveraux (a very UN-dashing Allan Forrest). Their love is played out against the "revolting natives" who are planning to attack the military post and take back their ancient land.
In the end, the Captain is captured and tortured but won't talk, so the rebels grab Compson and threaten to torture her too. He still won't talk, so they dress her up in Arab gear and put her up for sale on the auction block. THAT does it!
Everything about this Columbia release looks cheap (just my opinion). Otto Matieson plays a rebel boss and Roscoe Karns is the comedy relief, mostly chasing local women. On the plus side, Betty Compson is very beautiful.
Standard tale of the Middle East. In a French colony (probably Syria) Compson is visiting her military uncle (Edward Martindel) and meets the "dashing" Captain Deveraux (a very UN-dashing Allan Forrest). Their love is played out against the "revolting natives" who are planning to attack the military post and take back their ancient land.
In the end, the Captain is captured and tortured but won't talk, so the rebels grab Compson and threaten to torture her too. He still won't talk, so they dress her up in Arab gear and put her up for sale on the auction block. THAT does it!
Everything about this Columbia release looks cheap (just my opinion). Otto Matieson plays a rebel boss and Roscoe Karns is the comedy relief, mostly chasing local women. On the plus side, Betty Compson is very beautiful.
Breezy Charles Ray film has him as a country boy who dreams of being a detective. So he leaves the farm and gets a job at a health resort where he keeps finding "clues" but they don't add up to anything ... yet.
The resort is full of odd people and eventually the clues lead him to a crook disguised among the residents.
Winifred Westover co-stars as a chorus girl named Pinky. Ray was a major box office star from the mid-1910s through the end of the silent era. He specialized in this sort of innocent character who faces the perils of the city and wins the day but not always the girl.
Most of his silent films are lost so it's always nice to see a new Charles Ray film released on disk.
The resort is full of odd people and eventually the clues lead him to a crook disguised among the residents.
Winifred Westover co-stars as a chorus girl named Pinky. Ray was a major box office star from the mid-1910s through the end of the silent era. He specialized in this sort of innocent character who faces the perils of the city and wins the day but not always the girl.
Most of his silent films are lost so it's always nice to see a new Charles Ray film released on disk.
Great Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about racism and redemptive tolerance that ran from 1949 to 1954 on Broadway gets ambushed in its transition to the silver screen.
The original stars were not used. Ezio Pinza died in 1957 and Mary Martin was deemed too old for the role of Nellie. Warners went ahead and cast Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor in the lead roles.
Brazzi's singing voice was dubbed; Gaynor's was not. Also dubbed were John Kerr as Lt. Cable, and Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary. Ray Walston as Luther was not dubbed.
Everyone knows the plot. World War II Nurse Nellie falls for planter Emile but is repulsed by his having been married to a Polynesian woman. Cable falls in love with Bloody Mary's daughter but will not marry an Asian woman. Fine.
The film is marred by the obvious dubbing, which leads Brazzi and Kerr to overact while mouthing to the recordings. Hall does better.
Chirpy Gaynor is just plain wrong for the role of Nellie. She was probably forced to mimic Martin's famous renditions of songs and it does not come off. While Martin had a soft and lovely soprano voice, Gaynor's voice is brassy and forced. Yet she attempts to mimic each of Martin's vocal inflections. In her "Honey Bun" number she sounds like she's imitating Ethel Merman ... again. Gaynor should also have been dubbed.
Worst of all is Walston's broad, annoying Luther, who I guess is supposed to be comic relief. The last act, where Emile and Cable go off on a military mission, brings the film to a grinding halt as Luther stupidly becomes the bumbling center of the story, and this sequence drags on and on. Who cares about Luther?
What had been a show-stopping number on stage for Martin, "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of the My Hair," is stupidly trimmed to one chorus. So that goes nowhere.
Still, the basic message of the film, summed up in "You Have to Be Carefully Taught" is great. But Warners really did NOT do the show justice in this misguided film.
The tints. Bad idea from the get-go, they were meant to give the musical numbers a soft, dreamy, otherworldly look but they turned out to be way too harsh and dark and they detract from the songs. They were not able to correct the error before the film was released in theaters.
So what we have is a great musical about an important topic that gets ambushed by bad casting and several very bad decisions in the filmmaking process.
The original stars were not used. Ezio Pinza died in 1957 and Mary Martin was deemed too old for the role of Nellie. Warners went ahead and cast Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor in the lead roles.
Brazzi's singing voice was dubbed; Gaynor's was not. Also dubbed were John Kerr as Lt. Cable, and Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary. Ray Walston as Luther was not dubbed.
Everyone knows the plot. World War II Nurse Nellie falls for planter Emile but is repulsed by his having been married to a Polynesian woman. Cable falls in love with Bloody Mary's daughter but will not marry an Asian woman. Fine.
The film is marred by the obvious dubbing, which leads Brazzi and Kerr to overact while mouthing to the recordings. Hall does better.
Chirpy Gaynor is just plain wrong for the role of Nellie. She was probably forced to mimic Martin's famous renditions of songs and it does not come off. While Martin had a soft and lovely soprano voice, Gaynor's voice is brassy and forced. Yet she attempts to mimic each of Martin's vocal inflections. In her "Honey Bun" number she sounds like she's imitating Ethel Merman ... again. Gaynor should also have been dubbed.
Worst of all is Walston's broad, annoying Luther, who I guess is supposed to be comic relief. The last act, where Emile and Cable go off on a military mission, brings the film to a grinding halt as Luther stupidly becomes the bumbling center of the story, and this sequence drags on and on. Who cares about Luther?
What had been a show-stopping number on stage for Martin, "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of the My Hair," is stupidly trimmed to one chorus. So that goes nowhere.
Still, the basic message of the film, summed up in "You Have to Be Carefully Taught" is great. But Warners really did NOT do the show justice in this misguided film.
The tints. Bad idea from the get-go, they were meant to give the musical numbers a soft, dreamy, otherworldly look but they turned out to be way too harsh and dark and they detract from the songs. They were not able to correct the error before the film was released in theaters.
So what we have is a great musical about an important topic that gets ambushed by bad casting and several very bad decisions in the filmmaking process.