I may be the only person to source this movie because it features Frank Loesser in an acting role. Since earliest childhood my twin passions have been movies and Popular Song, which is how we used to refer to what w have now been taught to call the Great American Songbook, a volume in which Loesser rates a full chapter to himself. Because of my interest in and knowledge of the GAS there was no danger of me mistaking this title for the Cole Porter Broadway show of the same name which caused friction between its three stars - Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, and Ethel Merman - each of whom aspired to top billing, a situation resolved via a three-sheet resembling a Toblerone. The movie was a vehicle for Betty Hutton, who enjoyed roughly a decade in the spotlight, most of it at Paramount where Loesser was one of a classy group of staff songwriters - Ralph Rainger, Leo Robin,Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jay Livingston, Ray Evans - and more than held his own. He began around 1937 as a lyricist for hire and graduated to composer lyricist in the following decade. As a lyricist he had already provided Hutton with a hit 'Murder, He Says', and as composer/lyricist he scored three of her late movies (The Perils of Pauline, this one and Let's Dance) the manic side of Hutton fazed him not a jot and he came up with The Sewing Machine, Rumble, Rumble, Rumble, Poppa Don't Preach To Me but he also threw in a couple of gorgeous ballads (theoretically wasted on Hutton yet she was able to handle them) for Pauline he penned I Wish I Didn't Love You So, and though it lost Best Song Oscar to the inferior Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah, it did get to number One on Your Hit Parade. For this movie he wrote Where Are You (Now That I Need You), which was only a pick-up note behind I Wish. As a piano playing gangster Loesser doesn't have a lot to do but he manages to convince and the movie is fairly painless.
Review of Red, Hot and Blue
