Word: bendixes
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Greenwich Village (20th Century-Fox) provides a hackneyed but handsome vehicle for a number of Hollywood virtuosos, notably Brazilian Dancer Carmen Miranda and the plug-ugly king of illiterary men, William Bendix. Resplendently decked out in Technicolor, the film is a gaudy, expensive improvisation on the oft-told story about a cafe singer (newcomer Vivian Elaine) who yearns to be a musicomedy queen, and a struggling composer (Don Ameche) who wants to have his concerto played at Carnegie Hall...
Hardly any of this is as interesting as the improvising that Bendix (materially assisted by Miranda) does with the King's English. As an ambitious nightclub entrepreneur, he substitutes affability for finesse and rides to glory as a Broadway producer, pausing periodically to potshot people who think high-flown language is better than low-blown horse sense...
Typical shot: Bendix, his anthropoidal brow heavily creased, incredulously surveying a modern painting to determine which...
Tallulah Bankhead probably takes the leading role, but all of the characters, including Canada Lee, who puts in a masterful performance, and William "Smacksie" Bendix of "Wake Island" fame, seem chosen perfectly for their respective roles. With so limited a backdrop as the gray Atlantic, Hitchcock provides his audience with plenty of fast-talking aboard the boat. The arguments presented by the different characters, ranging from the socialism of the black gang to the utter sophistication of a Bankhead as a lady reporter and of a millionaire friend, are likewise honest in their interpretation. Hitchcock has scored again...
...William Bendix is a likable and sincere actor, but his natural good temper shines fatally through his industrious soot-&-greasepaint toughness. Susan Hayward, as the girl who drives him crazy, is much tougher, too coarsely so for the size of the girl's penthouse or the height of her social standing, but she is more convincing. She is, in fact, Hollywood's ablest bitch-player...