The Gay Sisters (1942)

That was an excellent one.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I have to agree with the majority of other reviews posted here. This film gets off to a cracking good start. So good that I wondered how they were going to keep up the strong pace. They didn't!Now I know why I had not heard of this film before seeing it on TCM. Maybe Warners buried it early after release, yet it did display some 'crowd pleasing' attributes.So confusing was this film, we had to stop and re-watch parts over to see if what 'seemed' to be happening, actually was!Great cast, great production values, great cinematography, great music, but oh, that overly odd, quite unbelievably resolved story!

I thought this movie was a Betty Grable-or-someone movie, maybe The Dolly Sisters type movie, or some song and dance 1942 outing to relieve the seriousness of wartime, but boy was I mistaken. Still, finding out that it was a drama piece actually good by Barbara Stanwyck standards, I decided to watch it. That is, after I turned on the DVR recording and found out the drama part by the host's introduction. I was intrigued enough to watch. I found the movie very interesting and impossible to stop watching. It started out with the Lusitania disaster and a wealthy woman's being killed on that unfortunate ship. Next, a World War I era soldier, in a wealthy mansion, was signing his last will and testament before he went off to war to get even with those enemies who torpedoed the ship. I looked for officer's insignia on his uniform, but didn't see any. I assumed that being so wealthy, he wouldn't just be an enlisted man. Turns out he was a major. Anyway, he meets his demise after going off to the front in World War One, and his three minor daughters are orphans. The woman killed on the Lusitania was his wife and the girls' mother. Next thing we know, the girls are grown up and supposedly penniless. An evil bad guy is trying to take away their mansion, and we spend most of the film seeing people trying to avoid him. He is successful and handsome, a namesake of our current basketball guy Charles Barclay/Barkley (?). The sisters have secrets from each other. All have been married. The eldest secretly married the bad guy, and had a child as a result of the first night of the marriage. The second sister married an English lord, but he is on the other side of the pond while she makes a play for the youngest sister's boyfriend. The youngest sister is married but trying to get an annulment while messing around with Gig Young (played by Gig Young, lol #^$%%r!!!). Later she says she got an annulment with some money, apparently to pay a lawyer, but it is fuzzy as to how this happened. I will leave plot holes to the other reviewers. Anyway, her marriage is over, and does she marry Gig Young? I don't know. The middle sister: her husband dies in a British plane crash, but she is SOL with Gig Young as he is in love with the youngest. As for the oldest, Fiona (Barbara Stanwyck), first she supposedly divorced (??) the bad guy, then at the end he says he's still her husband. Supposedly they marry/re-marry/cohabitate (??), and plan to live with the son they finally admit to having. Poor little kid. He wanted Gig Young for his uncle. I thought the monkey in the zoo was really cute. This movie was funny, maudlin, historic, etc. I enjoyed all the lawyers, especially Donald Crisp and Gene Lockhart.

This was probably one of the most well-made films of the 40's - Warner Bros. at the very height of their style. The photography by Sol Polito is arguably his finest achievement - gorgeous compositions and lighting with delicate shadowing. Max Steiner contributes one of his most complex and beautiful scores - the epitome of his classical leit motif method. The music adds great emotion and excitement to the plot and is exquisite and memorable. It's interesting to note that the same production team that made this movie went right on to make "Now, Voyager" later that year - a fine film which won honors and awards and went down as a historical favorite, ciefly because it starred Bette Davis. IN my opinion, "The Gay Sisters" is a much better film - better made in all departments, and more interesting, complex and enjoyable. A most unusual film which entertains those who take it for what it is, rather than project their own modern creative sensibilities or their advanced and demanding standards of hyper-critical perfection. Each thing has to be judged in it's own time reference and for what it is trying to achieve on its own terms. Most of the complaints I've read in these reviews are so childish and totally missing the point. If you're hungry for a perfect filet mignon, don't go to the bakery counter and start whining and complaining about the fluff pastry. The art of film criticism is truly lost on a large segment of the population. Sorry folks - maybe if this movie had had a score by the Rolling Stones and a hundred intricate and soul searching subplots, you'd all be gleefully gratified. I'll take an old movie without modern intellectual pretensions an day of the week!

When you have three fine actresses like Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Nancy Coleman, plus an intelligent script, and a good director, you have a very watchable movie. What makes the film particularly good is, that it concentrates on lives of each of the three sisters. Yes, it is a chick flick, but as a man, I found it quite engaging. The one weakness of the film, is George Brent, he lacks sexuality. But, the important point is, that it is an interesting story line, with complexity, and sophistication.