When The Whole World Reached Out For One Sweet Breathe Of Hollywood Glamour When It Counted-In Honor Of The Commemoration of 100^th Birthday Of Rita Hayworth-When Broadway Was Broadway- “Angels Over Broadway”- A Film Review

By Si Lannon  

You know the Internet is a wonderful tool at times especially for sites like this one very interested in history, of everything from governments to holy goofs. Most of the time you can find out information or information comes your way when you are perusing for something else. That was the case last year when I was looking something up at the archives of American Film Gazette and noticed they were doing a serious commemoration of the 100^th birthday of ruggedly handsome and versatile male hunk from the 1940s Robert Mitchum. That information led to a full-scale retrospective of his work, or the best of it anyway. The best being his noir stuff where he is hunk style and manly ready to take a few punches, throw a few, take an errant slug or two, bang-bang a few too for some dame, for some femme who had him all twisted up inside trying to find the mystery of her. Fat chance of discovering that as a million guys since Adam, maybe before have found out the hard way, although usually not  at the end of some femme fatale gun.

Not so with the way I got the information about 1940s sex siren and maker of guys, who knows maybe gals too and not just lesbians or bi’s either although they can have their stares just like anybody else but in their own right beautiful women who will concede that she has bested them, steamy midnight dreams Rita Hayworth. I was in Harvard Square on some unrelated business when I passed the famous and historic Brattle Theater a place I knew well in my 1970s cheap date period and have probably seen more films there than any other place. But video stores, studio comps, and lately Netflix and Amazon have taken the place of going to the big screen theater for me for many years now just because it is easier and more efficient to see the films at my discretion. For old-time’s sake I decided to take an “upcoming schedule” broadside which was provided in a little box in front of the theater entrance. When I opened it up later there was one of the icons of icons of Hollywood glamour when that burg was the only game in town and when glamour meant something to eye candy hungry soldiers and sailors, airmen too, during World War II and their waiting for the other shoe to drop anxious honeys sitting in dark movie houses too. Yes, Rita in a 1940s provocative, although what would now draw nothing but a snicker from even naïve eight grade girls, sun suit with that patented come hither if you dare look that every guy, every cinematic guy, begged to get next to. Was ready to take the big step off for like her then husband Orson Welles almost did in the fatal Lady From Shanghai.   

What the theater was doing and was famous for in the old days when the classic no money classic college date world was when I lived was a big retrospective of her work from early B-film stuff as she made her way up the Hollywood stardom food chain to some astonishing dance routines with Fred Astaire making you watch her moves not his something hard to do believe me to the later femme fatale classics like Gilda and the previously mentioned Lady From Shanghai  and then the drop back to B-films and cameos at the end of her career. Since the theater had treated her to this royal treatment I decided the least I could was to do a retro-review of those efforts for a now glamour-hungry world. That type of “innocent” glamour will never come back, the world is just a bit too weary and wary for that to happen but the younger sets should at least know why their grandfathers and grand-grandfathers stirred to her every move, pinned her photo up on a million lockers and in a million duffle bags.

My own Rita experience is like many things in the film business when Hollywood was top dog, rightly or wrongly, second hand from those cheap date retrospectives and earlier, high school earlier with Allan Jackson who used to rule the roost at this publication. In those old Acre neighborhood days, usually Saturdays, we would hike a couple of miles up the carless road to the old Strand Theater in Adamsville Center and watch plenty of 1940s films since to save money Sal Cadger the gregarious owner of the theater on first run features from the studios filled up the screen with this older material. We loved it, have loved it ever since. Bang-the first time I saw Rita sa-sashing into her hubby’s casino down in Buenos Aires, I think that is right, and stumbles onto ex-flame down and out gambler on a losing streak Glenn Ford, to find him working for her old man. Electricity beyond whatever words I could use to describe that tension in the air which spelled some hard times for somebody. I hope the reader will get an idea of that is this series as we commemorate Rita’s 100^th birthday year.       

  

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Angels Over Broadway.

DVD Review

Angels Over Broadway, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, screenplay by Ben Hecht, 1940

The first paragraph below is taken from other reviews about Rita Hayworth although the male stars playing against her are different here. Except they all have a similar feature; they all are smitten very smitten by Ms. Hayworth’s charms. Join the line, boys:

“Okay, let me bring you up to speed on the obscure meaning of the headline. See, a while back I was smitten by a film star, an old time black and white film star from the 1940s, Rita Hayworth. The film that sent me into a tailspin: the black and white noir classic Gilda where she played a “good” femme fatale who gets in a jam with a no good monomaniacal crook. But that part is not important femme fatales, good or bad, get mixed up with wrong gees all the time. It’s an occupational hazard. What is important though is that I got all swoony over lovely, alluring Rita. And as happens when I get my periodic “bugs” I had to go out and see what else she performed in. Of course Lady From Shang-hai came next. There she plays a “bad” blondish femme fatale (against a smitten Orson Welles). And then a couple of song and dance films partnered with Fred Astaire." And now this film under review, Angels Over Broadway. We are caught up.

After watching Ms. Hayworth going through her paces as a femme fatale and as a song and dance partner in other reviewed films it was somewhat surprising to see her play a “hayseed” (Brooklyn-born “hayseed”, okay) trying to get her big break on Broadway, one way or another. Old Rita had been around but had not lost faith in humanity, or what passed for humanity in her circles. Now this Ben Hecht vehicle is very much in the old Damon Runyon Broadway gamblers, con men, criminals, drifters, grifters and midnight sifters tradition with a full compliment of failed characters, a drunken playwright (naturally, its Broadway) played here by Thomas Mitchell, a fast-talking wanna-be con man who knows all the angles, and all the angels (played by Douglas Fairbanks, Junior), the wanna-be gold digger with the heart of gold (Rita) and a suicidal embezzler.

Said embezzler and his problem are the focus of the film as the playwright makes one last bid at humanity and attempts to come out of the alcoholic haze by helping the embezzler make restitution, the con man makes his big bid to play with the real hard guys (and to play, fitfully, with Rita) setting up the embezzler for a fall, and the failed gold-digger (Rita) gets “religion” and tries to bring that wisdom to Mr. Con Man. Needless to say this plot is thin, thin if you have been immersed in the serious Broadway shenanigans of one Damon Runyon, and the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired.

I would put it this way for those of you who, like me, sometimes go off the deep end and need to see or read everything about something or some one that has stuck your fancy lately. Take this as case study in artistic development; as a first, halting, unsuccessful step by Rita in femme fatale-ism. That makes Gilda just that much better. Still even here Rita has her charms.