Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

ShangLuda Admirable film.

SnoopyStyle Deborah Hoople (Barbara Stanwyck) is burlesque headliner Dixie Daisy at the Old Opera House on Broadway. It's a wild time on stage and even wilder backstage. Gee Gee Graham is a supportive showgirl. S.B. Foss owns the theater. Infatuated clown Biff Brannigan endlessly chases after Dixie. Snooty Lolita La Verne has a cat fight with Dolly Baxter. During a police raid, someone tries to strangle Dixie in the dark. Former star Princess Nirvena returns. Lolita has a fight with jealous gangster Louie Grindero and then she's found murdered.The burlesque is not particularly risqué probably due to production codes which makes the police raid kinda silly. The girls shake their booties a bit. I love Stanwyck but she's not the strongest song and dance gal. The strength is the backstage antics. I'm surprised that the Chinese waiters seem like human characters without the expected broad accents. The murderer would be more compelling if he's targeting only Dixie. The initial strangling is quite a good turn but the killer starts going elsewhere. This is nice for Stanwyck fans.

dougdoepke A darn near perfect mix of comedy, musical skits, and whodunit. And who would expect screen toughie Stanwyck to blend into the format so expertly, especially with the acrobatic dancing. Looks like every brassy blonde in Hollywood got hired as a chorus girl. To say they add more than a little spark would be a genuine understatement. Then there's the oh-so-snooty Princess Nirvena (Batchelor) from Toledo, no less. That snappy banter between the girls is at least half the fun. While eyeballing them running around half-dressed is the other half, at least for guys like me. I bet this 90-minutes wasn't shown to WWII troops overseas, otherwise they'd be swimming home. And catch the energetic O'Shea as a baggy pants comic. Too bad he's been largely forgotten. It looks like the whodunit part is largely an after-thought since it's not played up in the screenplay. No sir, the movie's having too much fun with the backstage antics. One thing for sure, Stromberg Productions didn't have to pony up a bundle for sets. That's because events never leave the burlesque theatre, and never go outdoors except for a couple rooftop shots. So it's a tribute to everyone involved, especially director Wellman, that the entertainment never sags. Anyway, kudos to novelist Lee and adapter Gunn for an excellent screenplay. And a salute to the inimitable Iris Adrian (Gee Gee) whose cheap blonde never let an audience down. And, for that matter, neither does the movie.

gkeith_1 Some of my observations: I give it a ten. Barbara Stanwyck in an eye popping performance, played against the goofy baggy pants clown sidekick. I adored seeing Pinky Lee, he of the TV show of my childhood. Black and white is not my favorite, but it had to suffice.Stanwyck gave the illusion of bumping and grinding, ala the Hays Code which forbade such graphic realism. 1943 was smack in the middle of World War Two. This was a good performance for all those fighting servicemen (was this movie shown overseas in their duty stations?). Apparently the War Code plus the Hays Code did a number on the depictions and performances, but the direction was smooth and exacting.Mae West also was an author and widely censored. I thought of her when I was reading about Gypsy Rose Lee's authorship endeavors. Both women are still household names, and evoke visions of sultry sexiness and vampy delivery. Both women had brains, and were very shrewd and inventive performers -- knowing what the public (read "men") wanted.1940s was also a time of movies about bucolic rural-type small town and historical situations, Meet me in St. Louis, etc., State Fair, The Best Years of Our Lives, National Velvet, Lassie Come Home, not to mention the late 1930s classics Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. Then there were the gangster bw noir movies, but that's another story. Some more late 1930s early 1940s movies were Stage Coach, Alexander's Ragtime Band and Weekend in Havana.Lady of Burlesque was about a sleazy, brassy, cheap jewelry, dyed hair, backstage world of a former opera house that was recently converted to presenting cranky, trashy, vulgar, vindictive, bitchy bump-and-grind female performers in very little garb. If I say bitchiness, I am only copying other reviewers. Men really liked this type of entertainment better; they wanted to see a lot of skin. (Did I mention sin?). In those other movies above mentioned, people kind of kept their clothes on. Barbara Stanwyck's character here was not trashy; she managed to have some class.Barbara Stanwyck? No other name star in the movie. She was the lead. Pinky was the only other actor I had ever heard of. Could Barbara be sexy? YESSSSSS!!!!! To wit, remember her in The Thorn Birds mini series. She was an elderly wealthy woman in love with the handsome priest. She pulled out all the stops to come on to the way-younger Father Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain). Barbara was jealous of the young ingénue female lead.Barbara was a gas in Ball of Fire. Indeed. Showing those geeky nerds how to dance. She had the legs to go with all of the steps. Talk about her opposite Fred MacMurray. I would rather see her in Lady of Burlesque.I am impressed. She could play against type. She could play any part. She knew the score. She had a very good, low singing voice in Lady of Burlesque.More observations: These women performers in this movie were not "housewives". They did not wait on husbands and children all day, serving them cocoa and washing their faces. The women were called "girls", which was appropriate for 1943 but way sexist by our current ideals. With all of their gangster boyfriends, can you imagine how many abortions they had in order to continue their careers? Abortion is the oldest form of birth control. Side note: "girls" could have killed each other, and probably did in real life, without waiting on the male murderers to do the job. There was so much jealousy and literal and figurative back-stabbing, perhaps, behind the scenes.Barbara as Dixie/Gypsy (rhymes, sort of?) Be happy Dixie Daisy (Daisy = Rose) was there. She had the best legs. She had breathtaking, ladylike yet sultry costumes. She obviously made more money than the other performers. She was the Headliner. Yes, one of her songs said she gave tons of money to Mother every week.I am a movie historian, and student of the lives of stage/movie/vaudeville/burlesque actors, dancers, singers, directors, producers and impresarios in history and of the current day.10/10

n_r_koch This movie shows how much the director matters in ensemble pieces. Wellman was one of those guys who seemed incapable of making a bad movie, even when stuck with limited resources and censorship, as in this case. This is basically a one-set film and it was shot under more or less double censorship (Code and wartime). But it's highly entertaining, considering what they couldn't show. (If I had been stuck in North Africa or the South Pacific in 1943 I would much sooner have seen this than those dreadful patriotic movies like THOUSANDS CHEER and SO PROUDLY WE HAIL or even CASABLANCA.) It's full of watchable funny girls of the kind that all but vanished (into the kitchen) after Pearl Harbor. The murder-mystery element is played the right way-- completely unseriously. Stanwyck is totally appealing, and Stephanie Bachelor ("Only tramps work in Toledo!") is one bombshell of a funny girl. Iris Adrian, Marion Martin, and Victoria Faust all make a big impression. Pinky Lee gets to do his schtick, including some tricky dancing, and O'Shea is good as the baggy-pants comic who's after Stanwyck. Both the writing (by Gunn) and editing are snappy (and witty: I love that quick cutaway to 'the Princess' reading her fan mail) and nobody just shows up and reads lines. I doubt anyone could have filmed this better in 1943.