George White's Scandals (1945)

Powerful

Just perfect...

Good movie but grossly overrated

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Jeez this is hard to watch and this era would be my favourite. Joan Davis doesn't know whether she wants to be Martha Raye, Betty Hutton or Eve Arden and fails in any comparison to them. Jack Haley is my (and I stress) personal least favourite "leading man" or song and dance man of this era despite the legendary Wizard of Oz being in his resume. Some of the routines are cringe-worthy. Check out Haley's impression of a fly landing on a cube of sugar and a chunk of limberger. Then if you can stomach it, Davis' rendition of an outboard motor trying to start. The sound effects of both were so obviously dubbed over and the paltry effort to be funny so bad, that I couldn't help imagining the embarrassment Davis and Haley must have felt actually standing on set in front of a camera and doing that stuff. Margaret Hamilton saved this horror from a 1 rating. Her cynical spinster shtick is endearing as always. I'm glad I saw it though and I'm consigning the memory to experience rather than pleasure.

I have a feeling that over at RKO they heard that MGM was doing The Ziegfeld Follies and decided to do George White's Scandals. White who was an actor as well as producer appeared in his own shows and in adaptions over at 20th Century Fox. Here however White is played by Glenn Tryon.But White himself is extraneous to this story which concerns two backstage plots. White's number one assistant Philip Terry falls for Martha Holiday whose mother back in the day was chorus girl in the Scandals but who married English nobility and retired. Now Holiday is trying out but lets no one know including Terry. Holiday also has Jane Greer as a rival who is pretty ruthless about getting her way.The second story concerns those lovebirds Jack Haley and Joan Davis who are both in the Scandals. They'd like to get married, but Haley promised his dear old parents that he wouldn't until his sister did. Unfortunately his sister is Margaret Hamilton and if you think the Wicked Witch intimidated the Tin Man in The Wizard Of Oz wait until you see her in this film. They even hire a professional escort for her in Fritz Feld who falls down on the job.That last one is pretty silly, but the players make it work. The best song in the score is the revived Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries which was introduced in the 1931 version of the Scandals on Broadway. It was introduced by Rudy Vallee and too bad they couldn't have gotten him to do it in the film. Vallee and White however came to a nasty parting of the ways and I doubt Rudy would have made himself available for this film.It's not MGM and it shows, but George White's Scandals is a decent enough film and it also features Gene Krupa and his band and Ethel Smith on her Tico Tico organ.Fans of the Wizard Of Oz might like to see Haley and Hamilton as brother and sister. No one is putting a smile on Margaret Hamilton's face.

I gave this film "5" out of "10", but there's a caveat.The movie itself might be described anywhere along the continuim, from "Awful" to "Excellent", depending on what the viewer is looking for. My rating is purely arbitrary.It's total escapist fare, one of hundreds of films ground out during WWII to divert the American people from the horrors of war for an hour or two, and it must have done its job. It's certainly diverting.But what it is, more than anything else, is a time capsule of the fashions, manners and mores of a particular time and place. It is the year 1945 preserved in amber, and it was completely dated by 1947.From the showgirls in the musical numbers - pompadoured, lacquered and outrageously costumed in what looks like whatever the wardrobe department had left over, to the irrepressible Joan Davis dressed to the nines and beyond in shoulder pads, sequins and hair, hair, hair - this picture is a never-ending parade of "What Not to Wear", '40's style, and it's a hoot.Add a couple of silly romantic sub-plots and the slinky Jane Greer as the backstage back-stabber, and you have the whole package. There's even leading man Phillip Terry - briefly married to Joan Crawford in real life, and the scene-stealing Margaret Hamilton thrown in for good measure. And believe me, anyone who can steal a scene from Joan Davis and Jack Haley in their prime is guilty of grand theft thespeus.So there you have it. This one is not likely to show up on AFI's list of anything. If you're looking for a Golden Age musical, this isn't it. But if you're in the mood to spend a little time watching how your grandparents did it, this one's for you.

This is the type of musical comedy that only works when the comic players are on screen. What is going on with the more traditional romantic plot line just isn't as interesting here. Where it is very funny (and very worth watching) is for the re-teaming of Joan Davis and Jack Haley as musical revue comics who have to deal with the fact that Haley's spinster sister (the wonderful Margaret Hamilton) does not approve of her brother being in show business and is determined to keep Davis from marrying him no matter what. Davis and Haley are perfectly matched (having worked together at 20th Century Fox in the late 1930's, and of course it is a delight to see Hamilton playing sister to her "Wizard of Oz" co-star (Haley). While she doesn't threaten to turn him into a beehive here, she does threaten to pull Davis's blonde hair out by its black roots, and tries to knock off Davis comically with a hatchet after finding out that the man Davis tried to fix her up with is a gigolo (played by that French lip popper, Fritz Feld). Hamilton, a gentle soul off screen, screeches "Who put you up to this?" with all the venom she had demonstrated as a wicked witch later known as Elphaba. The film sags when they are off screen, which identifies why it is perhaps not as well known as it would be otherwise. The other story deals with the daughter (Martha Holliday) of one of Davis's old "Scandals" cronies who wants to break into show business in spite of the fact that her father is a British nobleman. In that story-line, only Jane Greer (billed as "Bettyjane") offers any heat as a bitchy headliner whose dancing talents are obviously limited, getting acquainted with a bucket of paint as Hamilton meets her match in a sandbag.It all starts off wonderfully with a lavish production number sung to "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" by Joan Davis's real life daughter, Beverly Willis, who is playing Joan as a kid. The line of chorus girls goes on forever thanks to a nice mirror trick. Willis is absolutely hysterical in her bit, although Davis herself provides the voice for this character. Two comical production numbers with Haley and Davis are fun too---"Who Killed Vaudeville?" has Davis and Haley imitating various contraptions, most notably Davis sounding like a stalled automobile. Another number has the two complaining about dreaming of people like Cary Grant, John Wayne and Ginger Rogers (appearing silently in outtakes from one of their recent RKO films) while looking over at their mate to find them either covered with cold cream or snoring like the car motor Joan would later imitate. Specialties by organist Ethel Smith and Gene Krupa's band round out the musical numbers, while a montage of production numbers representing a "Scandals" performance appear to be outtakes from other RKO films. Krupa's drum playing is filled with energy. Another sweet moment comes when Davis's helium voiced maid (Rosemary Murphy) sings "Wishing", originally heard in the 1939 classic "Love Affair". While Ms. Davis would be paired by RKO in two films with Eddie Cantor, I much prefer her pairing with Haley. They seem like an ideal sitcom couple, although her later partner on "I Married Joan" was a perfect foil for her--- Jim Backus.