The Strip (1951)

Very well executed

It is a performances centric movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

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

The Strip marked Mickey Rooney's return to MGM after he had left in 1948 and the property was considerably down from what he was used to. Still The Strip is a nifty little noir film from MGM's B Picture unit that managed to earn itself one Academy Award nomination.In The Strip Mickey finds himself a returning Korean War veteran who wants to get back into civilian life and he meets up with gangster James Craig, a rather smooth individual who 'sells insurance'. Mickey works for him in some non-violent occupations and Craig actually lets him leave to pursue his real dream of being a drummer. But Mickey finds himself falling big time for Craig's girlfriend Sally Forrest and that's where his problems begin.The film is structured like Mildred Pierce with Mickey hauled into police headquarters because one of the cast has been found murdered and another hanging on for dear life. He relates his story to detective Tom Powers and we see the tale unfold.The Strip is also a nice look at the jazz club life in Los Angeles of that period. Where Rooney winds up working is William Demarest's jazz club on Sunset Boulevard better known as The Strip. The film also gives us an exhibition of one of Mickey Rooney's many talents, that of a drummer. He shows that if he pursued and concentrated on that he could have been another Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa. And the chance to jam with such people as Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden must have been what sold the Mick on doing this film.Guest starring in The Strip are singers Vic Damone and Monica Lewis, but the best thing about The Strip is the song A Kiss To Build A Dream On. That was the last song written by the celebrated Tin Pan Alley duo of Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar. It was an unfinished theme because Kalmar had died a few years earlier. To finish the lyric Ruby called on none other than Oscar Hammerstein, II and the combined talents of those three people earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for 1951. It lost however to In The Cool Cool Cool Of The Evening, Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman's hit from Here Comes The Groom. Louis Armstrong made a big hit record of it back in that day, you could hear it on jukeboxes for years.I'm sure it was of some satisfaction to Rooney that he made a small B film so much better with his incredible talent for his former home studio. That and a wonderful song attached to The Strip make it fine entertainment still.

I must say i am a big fan of TCM but this one was one of those movies which won't ever belong to the category of Roman Holiday or Affair to Remember and yet it has a charm and passion that leaves an indelible memory of sorts for people who love the 50s or to be more generic..... 1930s to 1960s movies. Personally, the semblance of the era in both Hollywood & bollywood movies in terms of the simple, low-cost, high impact movies is what is so nice about them. "Give me a kiss to build a dream on" -: the refrain of the movie as catches the passion of the theme well and is the best thing of the movie. Even though most of the movie is supposed to be predictable, the passion yet makes it a gr8 watch. A recent Hindi movie(bollywood) lifted the tunes to give "Kaisi paheli hai kaisi paheli zindagani" which won the national awards for best song. That movie"Parineeta" too is a period based movie that makes a 1930s story into a 1960s movie made in 2005 and what better than this tune being woven into the movie.

Mickey Rooney isn't convincing in the role of a nice guy who falls in with a bad crowd. His acting is OK. He just doesn't look the part. Sally Forrest has been better elsewhere.The plot, told primarily in flashback, is routine: Honest boy in dishonest profession falls for cold, ambitious girl. Murder is involved. The whole nine yards. One has to like jazz to enjoy this. And was Vic Damone, for whom the plot stops while he delivers a number, considered jazz? On the other hand, the main song, originally delivered in a bizarre duet between Rooney and William Demarest, is a great one. "A Song To Build A Dream ON": Such a gem deserved a better setting.

One of the dumber scripts around. The dramatic conclusion to the story takes place off screen and is merely described in a police report. (Girl shoots gangster dead for threatening her boyfriend [Rooney] gets killed herself in the fracas.Some good musical numbers--mainly Satchmo singing "A Kiss to Build a Dream On." Rooney and Demarest are actually both good being Rooney and Demarest.But as an L.A. period piece (released in '51) it's fun to see the Sunset strip and other locations. Particularly if you grew up around here. There are a lot of movies from that period, made on a low budget with crummy scripts. But fun to watch for their money-saving use of locations and for their natural noir ambience.