Dangerous When Wet (1953)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The challenge of crossing the English channel becomes the focus for swimming champion Esther Williams who comes from an athletic family. Of course, when you've got Charlotte Greenwood as a mother who can kick her legs sideways up to her head without calling for Ben Gay then flies into a split, you know you've got to keep up. After they get out of bed on the right side, they face the challenges of training her for this competition, and find romantic entanglements as well, Williams with the handsome Argentinian Fernando Lamas, who in real life would eventually become her husband. Middle daughter Barbara Whiting is the typical Ann Miller/Betty Garrett/Janis Paige/Virginia O'Brien second lead and sings of her attraction to the opposite sex in the complicated song titled "I Like Men" (as opposed to Kathryn Grayson in the same year's "Kiss Me Kate" who declared just the opposite), and the entire cast, including Williams' brassy agent Jack Carson, papa William Demarest, younger sister Donna Corcoran and the French damsel Denise Darcel get together for the truly delightful "Ain't Nature Grand" where Greenwood gets to take center stage and show what she had done twenty years before on Broadway and ten years ago in Fox musicals with Betty Grable. A delightful cream puff of a musical, Williams shows that when she had a fun script and something to do except wear a bathing suit, she could have a ball on screen and let it show. Here, her big water number (other than the channel crossing in the finale) is an animated water ballet with none other than Tom and Jerry, making their first full length screen appearances ever since dancing with Gene Kelly in "Anchor's Aweigh". Here, Tom gets to do more than serve Jerry, and they are also joined by a cute turtle doing the back stroke and an amorous octopus who happens to sing like Lamas. Great fun. Take the kiddies.

In Dangerous When Wet Esther Williams finds herself the oldest daughter of three in the Ozark family of William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood, her sisters being Donna Corcoran and Barbara Whiting. Medicine show salesman Jack Carson is passing by and all the clichés about the farmer's daughter start occurring.When Carson comes calling Demarest starts bragging about his family all being physical culturists, Ozark style. When he gets to talking about Esther Williams swimming the Chattahoochee River which is nowhere near the Ozarks, Carson gets interested. He's peddling some kind of snake oil medicine, but he sees Esther swimming the English Channel he sees her as one tasty bit of advertising. Carson's libido ain't totally put on hold.But he's cooled down a might when Esther meets a romantic Frenchman played by Fernando Lamas. Their real life marriage came much later. Not to worry because a French Channel swimming aspirant Denise Darcel has her eyes on Carson.Dangerous When Wet is best known for a dream sequence where Esther does a water ballet with Tom and Jerry and some other cartoon characters. In her memoirs Esther says that one of her least favorite experiences was with Gene Kelly who gave her an awful time in the dance numbers in Take Me Out To The Ballgame. The muscles she developed as a swimmer were not conducive to dancing as she explained and Kelly knew this and still gave her a bad time. One of his innovations was a ballet with Tom and Jerry in Anchors Aweigh. I think Esther decided to show him that she could do what he could in her own field. And Esther certainly succeeded.Jack Carson is his usual braggart type and William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood show a thing or two with a little soft shoe they do. All and all Dangerous When Wet is a great example of the MGM musical and an Esther Williams water spectacular rolled into one.

O.K.; so it's not a classic! So, it's not one of Esther's best, but - considering the over-all movie - it IS very entertaining! When I first saw this movie as as a teenager, I found myself singing "I Got Out of Bed on the Right Side" so much that the family finally said, "For God's sake! Will you SHUT UP?" So, sense of humor! No respect for Esther whom I adored and was in love with as ever other red-blooded American Teenager was at the time! Recently, I was happy to see it play on Turner Classics and the charm of the film has not diminished! I guess the best part of the film was when the whole cast got in on the song "Ain't Love So Grand"! And there's Charolotte Greenwood doing her dancing specialty at the end of the number. I guess this was the second to last that she ever danced in a film with "Oklahoma" being the last in which she played Aunt Eller. Originally, she was the first pick for playing Aunt Eller in Oklahoma on Braodway, but other commitments stopped her from doing it, so Rogers and Hammerstien were thrilled when they finally signed her up for the movie version. Greenwood was known for her eccentric dancing in which she had been a hit in an old move called "The Pip From Pittsburg". It's sad to see many of our characters in the business gone, but it's wonderful that we still have their performances on film to enjoy forever.It's true that Esther married Fernando in real life, but from what I remember, Lana Tuner was married to Lex Barker, and Arlene Dahl was married to Fernando Lamas, and they were a happy foursome so much that Turner divorced Barker, Dahl divorced Fernando, and then Dahly married Lex Barker and Lana Turner married Fernando Lamas, but before the divorces Arlene Dahl gave birth to Lorenzo Lamas who would go on to a somewhat fame in movies and T.V. but not with the stature and popularity of his father. Then much later, after filming Dangerous When Wet Fernando started dating Esther and Esthers film career was beginning to go downhill, and she was pretty well tired of making movies and when Fernando asked her to marry him, he asked her, "Can you stop being Esther Willimas?" and she gladly said, "Yes!" and she kept her word to the day Fernando died and didn't have anything to do with a career in show-business! Much later, Lorenzo was on, I believe, The Johnny Carson Show, and Carson asked him what is was like having Esther as a mother, and he proudly answered, "How many kids can claim they were taught to swim by Esther Williams?"

For those who haven't seen this one there are, perhaps, a couple of mini-SPOILERS to follow:This bit of fluff opens with the Higgins family, Dad, Mom and their three daughters, rising and shining on the family's farm, for an early morning swim. Esther, the eldest daughter, seems to be reluctantly following the parade to the swimming hole, and the audience is in for a bit of a surprise. Each family executes a dive into a rustic backlot pool until Esther is at water's edge. But she dips a toe in the H2O and decides, naw!, opens the book she's been carrying, and curls up at the water's edge, contentedly immersed in her reading material! When I smiled at this clever way of postponing our expectations, I thought we were in for one of Esther's more rewarding vehicles, and it does have some rather good chuckles in store. Overall, though, it's not up to the best that the mermaid was required to do during her reign as one of M-G-M's box office queens.Some of the better moments include Esther slithering from the amorous clutches of Fernando Lamas (whom she eventually married a few years after this one was filmed) as he croons an insistent love song; Tom and Jerry, M-G-M's animated feline/rodent duo, joining Esther for an underwater ballet (this film's only equivalent of the usually extravagant production numbers in Esther's previous efforts); Denise Darcel, all impenetrable French accent and looking far-too-zaftig to ever be credible as Esther's rival in a crossing-the-English Channel swimming contest (Mlle. Darcel IS funny though!); and Jack Carson once again amusingly embodying a con man with a touch of lechery. Charles Walters directs with his usual lack of distinction and the production values aren't as luxurious as are on display in some other Esther aquacades. Several scenes occur at night, lending a rather dark look to a good portion of the proceedings, in contrast to the normally sunny Technicolor that radiates from the screen when Esther flashes her dazzling smile.As for who wins the Channel swimming contest, do you have to ask?!? I enjoyed its modest ninety-five minute running time and you probably will too.