Word: gagged
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Escape "Gag Rule...
Sturges takes far too much film footage setting the stage for his gag. Rex Harrison is an aging, temperamental and gabby symphony conductor. He is madly in love with his beautiful young wife (Linda Darnell), but he begins to suspect her, unjustly, of carrying on with his handsome young secretary (Kurt Kreuger). Brooding over his jealousy as he conducts a concert (Rossini, Wagner, Tchaikovsky), he imagines himself solving his domestic triangle in three different ways: 1) by murder, 2) by generosity to the young "lovers," and 3) by suicide...
When he actually tries out the murder plot he has imagined so smoothly, he bungles it hilariously. Having spent too long arriving at his gag, Sturges cannot resist overworking it. Harrison is so funny stepping through a cane-bottomed chair that he is allowed to do the whole routine a second time...
Producer Joe Pasternak was wise enough not to ride this little gag too hard. He has allowed time for enough moon-spoon-swoon songs to please the most ardent Sinatra fans. Kathryn Grayson occasionally joins in, and gives the love lyrics a wholesome quality of antiseptic passion...
...success. Betty Grable is there to show off her pretty ankles and sing some nice tunes. Dan Dailey figures to de-emphasize Miss Grable's mediocre dancing with his own slick routines. The supporting cast of June Havoc, Jack Oakie, and James Gleason couldn't be any better. Gag specialists have written a few high-voltage boffs into the script and the whole thing is packaged in some real nice technicolor. These are the merits. In spots they give the picture color and vitality. Where it falls horribly flat is in the story and in the overburden placed...