Word: mirandas
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Arnold Moss is an impressive Prospero with an incisive voice that gives force and significance to some of Shakespeare's most moving poetry. France Heflin portrays Miranda with an air of innocent wonder that is truly beautiful. Ballet is not out of place in "The Tempest," and Vera Zorina's Ariel has exceptional grace, if not marked dramatic excellence...
Something for the Boys (20th Century Fox) turns out to have nothing very notable for anyone. Carmen Miranda replaces the stage version's Ethel Merman as the girl whose radioactive teeth help the soldier hero (Michael O'Shea) win a sham battle and a promotion; Mr. O'Shea and Vivian Elaine handle the love interest, and one of the Cole Porter songs, plus six fair-enough new non-Porter items. There are some pleasant essays in low-keyed Technicolor and sculptural cross-lighting in the dance numbers. Phil Silvers combines a daftly likable energy with some blurrily...
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...
...completely believable. Lynn Carter makes an attractive pick-up girl and injects a much-needed note of natural humor. Doubling in the role of author and actor, Harold Kennedy plays the faithful friend Tony as if the part had been written for him. Louise Valery, Lee Nugent, Allan Tower, Miranda Swanson and David Tyrell round out the cast. It should be said that Andrew Mack's set is probably the best of its kind that has been seen in many a straw-hat season...