...and all the 'dream sequences' were hit-and-miss (well, Jenny RULES...) ...the 'flashback' stuff was also a bit sad, but explains the riddle of Liza. ...at the end of the day, it's a typical mid-40's film that finds itself mainly a 'romantic drama' (is there a catchy phrase for that? rom-drom?) with a dash of 'mild screwball'. And, it DOES have its entertaining moments. Of course, the Jenny scene is worth the price of admission a few times over...
...but the overall draw is the 'romantic tension' between Ginger and Ray Miland, who had just done The Major and the Minor with Ginger a few years prior, which proved to be a pleasing match... it works pretty well here again, and leads to a logical conclusion.
...now, back to the Jenny scene... I forgot Ginger gives a little 'Ha-Ha' at the end of a line when she was in the cage... um... yeah... that was a pretty trippy sequence there, with the dancing rabbits and egg people... um... yeah... but Ginger is just SO cool here... still one of my all time fave GingerScenes...
As to the 'current state' of this film, there has never been, to my knowledge, any commercial copy of this one available... thus, the copies floating around are from television airings (I have two copies, the better of the two from AMC...) It's a shame HD wasn't around in AMC's heyday, as the copy is quite 'blurry' and color is ...eh... ...in short, we REALLY need a restored copy of this, Paramount or folks who bought Paramount... pleeeze?
Well, that's it... past my bedtime, y'all!
Stay tuned for what's on the docket for tomorrow night... check on FB!!!
Until then...
KIG!
Hu
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For all of its excesses, LITD really doesn't make my fav list of GingerFilms. It does have its good moments, with "The Saga of Jenny" leading the list there.... I read a book on the history of "Lady in the Dark" some time ago. It stated that when Gertrude Lawrence was a smash in the Broadway show, she really did Jenny as a "bump and grind." Ginger did an abbreviated version..... Makes me wonder how the original really went... SO WISH that Broadway would have recorded one performance of shows in order to have an historical record.... We've missed so much history! Well, we know that the movie didn't meet expectations largely due to the inadequacies of the director. The score was underwhelming too, even with the most expert orchestrations of the master, Robert Russell Bennett. "Lady" is another example of the breadth of Ginger's talents, even if the movie, while certainly entertaining, fell short of expectations following the smash hit of the Broadway show.
ReplyDelete...nice overview, BA!!! the music was a bit 'off'... Jenny was cool...loved Ginger's vocalization... that last line run she does is somewhat 'Mermanesque', no? ...which is interesting as Ethel started her film career in "Follow the Leader"... well, just a ;degree of separation' I guess, which you could use MadMadMadMad World, which Merman was in (along with purt near everybody else (wish Ginger would have showed up in there somewhere, perhaps dancing with Fred?)) to connect Ginger to almost ANYone...
DeleteYes, it would have been great if Ginger had done some cameos in a number of films. Wonder who missed the boat there, the casting directors or Ginger by turning down offers? Oh, well....... ;-)
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