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"The most talked-about woman in America," Mae West, of course, exalted as butterfly and spider and lamé-wrapped Lady Liberty. "You certainly know the way to a man's heart." "Funny, too, because I don't know how to cook." The affair with the prizefighter (Roger Pryor) is curtailed by his manager, off from St. Louis to New Orleans she goes, eagerly received at the Sensation House. Torchy hits with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, "Memphis Blues," "My Old Flame," "St. Louis Blues." After the show, a patron breathlessly catalogs the artiste's talents: "Is this a proposal or are you taking inventory?" West's Naughty Nineties, definitely laundered by the Hays Code but given Leo McCarey's burlesque appreciation and adroit technique. (An unbroken long-shot showcases the pugilist's one-punch knockout at the gym, a high-angled crane surveys his fall during the championship bout.) The nightclub owner (John Miljan) is a skunk ("His mother should've thrown him away and kept the stork"), his jealous girlfriend (Katherine DeMille) has no use for the chanteuse, a matter of "necessary charm." Stolen jewels in a darkened road, with the heroine in the shadowy coach like Dumas' Milady. "I'm wild about you." "Some of the wildest men make the best pets." Motley's holy rollers at the open-air congregation, West in black moaning on the balcony, looming shadows and water reflections and brimstone contortions in shuddering montage. (The previous year had the parodic version in Duck Soup, "All God's Chillun Got Guns.") A lick of hellfire for the climax, then marriage. "One bad habit's good as another." With John Mack Brown, James Donlan, Stuart Holmes, Harry Woods, Edward Gargan, Libby Taylor, and Warren Hymer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |