The Bamboo Blonde

1946 "SHE WAS THE SWEETHEART OF EVERY G.I.!"
5.8| 1h7m| NR| en
Details

A pilot of a B 29 meets Louise Anderson, a singer in a New York nightclub. He falls in love with her, but he had to leave next day for action in the Pacific. He lets paint her picture on his bomber, the "Bamboo Blonde" and becomes a hero with his crew sinking a Japanese battleship and shooting down a Japanese fighter wing. Back in New York, he leaves his fiancée and engages him to Louise.

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Reviews

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!
Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
jacobs-greenwood Directed by Anthony Mann, known mostly for working with James Stewart on (primarily) Westerns like The Naked Spur (1953), this film stars singer Frances Langford in the title role, Ralph Edwards, Russell Wade and Jane Greer. Based on Wayne Whittaker's story, this slightly above average B musical romance features a screenplay by Olive Cooper and Lawrence Kimble.The film opens with businessman Eddie Clark (Edwards) telling a reporter the story behind his conglomerate of products branded "Bamboo Blonde". Patrick Ransom, Jr., son of "the Ransoms", a wealthy couple in New York, is about to join the war in the Pacific as the new Captain of a B-29 crew, one that has been together for some time. He is naturally apprehensive about the assignment as their new skipper, wondering if they'll accept him, and is also dismayed that his socialite fiancée (Greer) is not there with his parents to see him off. Though his folks don't really care for her, they've kept it to themselves. When he phones her, she says that she can't make it; she doesn't, however, tell him it's because she'd rather go to a party ... without him.Wanting to ditch him, a member of his crew tells him they are all meeting at Eddie's club, which unbeknownst to him is actually off limits to serviceman. When he arrives, he sees that the establishment is virtually empty. Before he is seen by the M.P.'s in Eddie's office, Louise, the nightclub singer played by Langford, hides him in her dressing room. Much to his enjoyment (and ours?), she sings a song which he is able to watch through the curtains and, upon learning that the club is "out of bounds", he then exits out the backdoor. When Louise is leaving the club through same door, he is still there, having just figured out that he was dumped by his crew. She offers to take him to dinner and does, at a down home place called "Mama's". They have a wonderful time, though when Patrick tells Louise he lives on a farm, she assumes he's a farmer and he doesn't enlighten her further.Two hours later, Patrick and Louise are back at the station and he notices a photo booth, insisting that she sit for an instant picture, which she does. Then, when he's kissing her goodbye, his whole crew witnesses the event, whistling and applauding. Unfortunately, the ace crew he inherited has a string of mishaps and fails to succeed immediately under their new skipper. One of the crew hatches an idea to paint the face of (who they assume is) the Captain's girlfriend, the blonde Louise, on the body of sarong-clad girl on the nose of the plane ... for luck! Since Patrick is too embarrassed that he doesn't even know the girl's name, the crew dubs her the "Bamboo Blonde". And, of course, the good luck charm works. In fact, Captain Patrick's B-29 becomes the most successful bomber in the squadron. Once the news of this reaches the home front, Eddie sees it as an opportunity to market his club with Louise as the "Bamboo Blonde" which, though she too is embarrassed, he does and to great success.The Armed Forces then decides to bring the "Bamboo Blonde" and its crew back home to sell war bonds across the country. Wanting as much publicity as possible, they (including Eddie) arrange a big welcome home party and a reunion for Patrick and Louise, who are both thinking they got the other into something undesirable. Patrick's "fiancee", Eileen (Greer), suddenly becomes interested in him again, now that he's a war hero, and decides to get him back. She goes to the festivities with the intent to disrupt things, and succeeds by whisking him away. Later though, with his mother's assistance, Patrick is able to escape Eileen and return to find Louise at "Mama's" and the two of them pick up where they left off.There is some more drama, however, instigated by Eileen, who doesn't give up easily. But things end up pretty much where one expects them to in this one.
dougdoepke Hollywood was turning out these slightly built musicals by the score during the war. Though this one wasn't released until mid-'46, it has all the markings. Hotshot bomber pilot Pat (Wade) meets nightclub singer Louise (Langford) and, guess what, they fall in love. Trouble is he's already engaged to conniving, snooty Eileen (Greer) who won't let him go. So romantic complications ensue. In between these, Langford gets to warble a few tunes, while the fast- talking Edwards gets to act the bigshot promoter. Add the always wise-cracking Iris Adrian as somebody or other named Montana, and you've got an entertaining cast. Sure, it's all forgotten 10-minutes later, but in the meantime, the shenanigans go down like a pleasant little snack.
marcslope Anthony Mann, of all people, shows a very capable hand with the musical form in this RKO B, a very-end-of-the-war mixture of patriotism, class consciousness, and utter nonsense. Among its virtues: Frances Langford, always likable and singing up a storm; Iris Adrian, Pauline Kael's favorite sarcastic sidekick of the '40s; Ralph Edwards, showing surprising pre-"This Is Your Life" comic deftness as a scheming agent; and Jane Greer, as Russell Wade's bitch-girlfriend, as stock-character a villainess as you'll ever see. The songs aren't much, but Frances does nicely by "Good for Nothing' But Love" (twice), and a South Sea Islands production number is hilariously, endearingly tacky, with chorus girls slinking about in godawful choreography. The story has loose ends that aren't tied neatly together, and it ends very abruptly, but it's an enjoyable low- budget programmer that fairly screams 1946.
Alice Liddel As a masterclass in what a great auteur can do with trite, uncharacteristic material, 'The Bamboo Blonde' is a must see. With a bizarre mixture of war propaganda, romantic comedy and musical, Mann manages to offer a prototype of the frayed masculinity so familiar from his noirs, Westerns and historical epics (see the final third, the ritual humiliation of the amiable hero); as well as his subversive interest in signs (see especially the musical number where the heroine walks through a landscape of labelled props), and the gaping difference between their value and the reality they hide. All this AND Jane Greer, as duplicitous a nay-sayer here to American masculinity as she would be a year later in the greatest ever noir, 'Out of the Past'.