Betty Grable and Dan Dailey fare quite well in this musical comedy-drama which, initially, appears to have come straight off the '40s-era assembly line at 20th Century-Fox Studios. Based on the play "Burlesque" by Arthur Hopkins and George Manker Watters, the atypically complicated plot concerns a married couple, stage performers in the 1920s, who are separated after the husband gets a shot on Broadway and the wife gets stuck behind on the road. The twosome remain devoted to each other until it leaks in the press he has been spending lots of free time with a pretty new co-star--the wife's nemesis! Grable wears a cockamamie hairdo throughout (and her only good song, "What Did I Do?", is hampered by poor choreography), though she's sweet in her backstage scenes, joshing with pals Jack Oakie and June Havoc, and playing flattered star to handsome admirer Richard Arlen. Dailey, on the other hand, received an Oscar nomination for his work, and it's easy to see why; walking a fine line between pathos and comedy, he's portraying a talented alcoholic, desperate to keep the peace while needing an outlet for his own frustrations (one senses he isn't so much insecure as he is a grown-up child who needs a firm, upstanding mother-figure to guide him). The picture doesn't really get into the masochism build into the plot's formula. Grable can see that her husband "Skid" is on the skids, floundering and helpless--his own worst enemy--yet Grable's loving responses to him are a tad bit insane. Sure, she's noble by lending a helping hand, but the movie-makers equate her kind gestures with a selflessness that goes beyond the call of duty. Betty isn't an enabler, per se--the point is made that her unconditional devotion will turn everything right again--but how many people actually bought this 'happy ending'? I didn't find it very convincing, but 1948 was really too early for Hollywood musicals to become dark and probing. For its time, this was probably just the tonic for matinée audiences hoping to shake the blues away. **1/2 from ****
9 Reviews
Contains a good Dan Dailey performance
creightonhale9 October 2004
I saw this movie several times on television back in the 1970s, so my comments come from a rather distant memory. This film was typical of 20th Century Fox's output of Betty Grable films during the mid to late 1940s. A remake of Paramount's and Hal Skelly's DANCE OF LIFE (1929) and a further remake by Paramount in 1937 called SWING HIGH, SWING LOW starring Carole Lombard, the story is all about an alcoholic burlesque performer, played by Dan Dailey, who brings down not only himself but also his wife, played by Grable. Jack Oakie, June Haver, James Gleason, and Richard Arlen (!) are also in it. The most vivid memory I have of the film is Dan Dailey's Oscar nominated performance. I remember being impressed by him and finding him both believable and sympathetic. His performance lifts the film above the average Betty Grable nostalgia vehicle. The two stars were always good together, even though the material was usually recycled and mundane, sometimes wallowing in nostalgia and overproduction. Most feel Dailey's nomination for the Oscar a travesty: he took the place that many feel belonged to Humphrey Bogart in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. Bogart certainly deserved recognition for his work in that film, but Dailey's work here also warrants mention.
Directed by Walter Lang (of course), it's based on the play BURLESQUE.
Directed by Walter Lang (of course), it's based on the play BURLESQUE.
Cry Havoc
writers_reign11 August 2019
Warning: Spoilers
About the best you can say for this is it's a chance to see June Havoc in vaudeville. Havoc did in fact appear in several 'straight' movies notably Gentlemans' Agreement but she started life, of course, as 'Dainty June' Hovick and as a child was a headliner in vaudeville and was later immortalized as Baby June in Gypsy on both stage and screen. She works well here as one half (with Jack Okie) of the two second leads. Dailey was regularly teamed with Grable and the results were pretty painless if formulaic. This offers a fairly realistic fits-where-it-touches portrait of vaudeville but overall it doesn't stand up as well as other titles of similar vintage.
A close look at vaudeville and alcoholism
SimonJack2 June 2018
In general, this movie is just a fair musical and drama with a touch of comedy. But, two things raise it a couple of notches and give it historical value. The first is its excellent picture of vaudeville. The second is its portrayal of alcoholism and early social views about it.
"When My Baby Smiles at Me" is one of the best movie exposés of vaudeville. It shows what it was like for performers who made a living traveling in such stage shows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the U.S. and Canada. It shows the various types of entertainment - comedy, song and dance, burlesque, small dramatic acts and skits, that made up vaudeville. Some also had acrobats, magic and animal acts.
By the mid-20th century, burlesque had faded from the scene and TV combined with the movies to end the reign of vaudeville. But a form of revue shows continued to be popular on TV where they became known as variety shows. The Ed Sullivan Show reigned as king of this type of entertainment from June 1948 to June 1971. Only then, the talent competition was much greater and the quality of entertainers was always high. Song and dance and comedy remained the chief forms of entertainment, but acrobatics had a new venue for such talent formerly seen only in circuses. And, trained animals and special talents and skills of all kinds were regularly featured.
In this movie, the cast does a fine job in showing the backstage angst about late performers, and the hustle and bustle of actors as they quickly change makeup and costumes between sets to hurry onto stage for their next act. Betty Grable and Dan Dailey aren't a match for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But they are good in this film, and show us what in that time would have been considered very good or top entertainment on the vaudeville circuit. Likewise with Jack Oakie and June Havoc.
Then, there's Dailey's performance as Skid Johnson, who has a drinking problem. And Grable's role as Bonny Kane, his wife, who doesn't know what to do and can't make him stop drinking. The film isn't long enough to have included more of the picture of the entertainer in his slide from heavy drinking to alcoholism. That would have included more than his being habitually late for show starts. He would have begun to forget a line or two, perhaps slur a line, stagger noticeably, forget things the next day.
But, in the throes of his addiction, Johnson is the picture of the helpless and forlorn alcoholic. His portrayal is very real. Many viewers may miss some of the telltale signs of alcoholism shown here. Those who have personal experience with it will note some of the signs beyond the amount and frequency of Johnson's drinking. Particularly poignant is the scene in which Johnson says that he went to pieces when Bonny left him. That's a common trait of alcoholic denial, excuse and blame. He puts it elsewhere - on his wife. Those of us with experience in 12-step programs know this as the "poor me" attitude. It oozes self-pity and smothers any need for one to come to grips with his or her own culpability.
But, there's more to the "treatment" of alcoholism than that in this movie. The film takes place in the 1920s. That was during prohibition when speakeasies flourished across America. It was also before the birth of 12-Step programs to treat addictions. Alcoholics Anonymous got its start in 1935, and spread widely only after World War II.
The film shows Bonny Kane unable to do anything to stop Johnson's drinking or tackle his alcoholism. She falls into a trap and role that continues to enable the alcoholic to be what he is. It's interesting that the movie doesn't ever use the words alcoholic or alcoholism. Even when Johnson is in a hospital ward at New York's Bellevue Hospital, there's no mention of alcoholism.
Dailey's performance overall was excellent of an alcoholic personality. He promises to quit and has his last drink, but doesn't follow through. He hides empty bottles. He doesn't hesitate to offer someone else a drink or have one when someone else suggests it. He has no remorse about his boozing or its effect on his wife. But he does love her. That's the insidiousness of alcoholism. In the hospital and later, he genuinely looks to be suffering from the disease. The only obviously unbelievable scene is at the end when Skid Johnson has all the energy and vitality to do the last song and dance number with Bonny Kane.
Dailey received his only Oscar nomination for his role in this film, and it was well deserved. But for Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" in 1948, Dan Dailey may well have won the best actor Oscar that year.
"When My Baby Smiles at Me" is one of the best movie exposés of vaudeville. It shows what it was like for performers who made a living traveling in such stage shows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the U.S. and Canada. It shows the various types of entertainment - comedy, song and dance, burlesque, small dramatic acts and skits, that made up vaudeville. Some also had acrobats, magic and animal acts.
By the mid-20th century, burlesque had faded from the scene and TV combined with the movies to end the reign of vaudeville. But a form of revue shows continued to be popular on TV where they became known as variety shows. The Ed Sullivan Show reigned as king of this type of entertainment from June 1948 to June 1971. Only then, the talent competition was much greater and the quality of entertainers was always high. Song and dance and comedy remained the chief forms of entertainment, but acrobatics had a new venue for such talent formerly seen only in circuses. And, trained animals and special talents and skills of all kinds were regularly featured.
In this movie, the cast does a fine job in showing the backstage angst about late performers, and the hustle and bustle of actors as they quickly change makeup and costumes between sets to hurry onto stage for their next act. Betty Grable and Dan Dailey aren't a match for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But they are good in this film, and show us what in that time would have been considered very good or top entertainment on the vaudeville circuit. Likewise with Jack Oakie and June Havoc.
Then, there's Dailey's performance as Skid Johnson, who has a drinking problem. And Grable's role as Bonny Kane, his wife, who doesn't know what to do and can't make him stop drinking. The film isn't long enough to have included more of the picture of the entertainer in his slide from heavy drinking to alcoholism. That would have included more than his being habitually late for show starts. He would have begun to forget a line or two, perhaps slur a line, stagger noticeably, forget things the next day.
But, in the throes of his addiction, Johnson is the picture of the helpless and forlorn alcoholic. His portrayal is very real. Many viewers may miss some of the telltale signs of alcoholism shown here. Those who have personal experience with it will note some of the signs beyond the amount and frequency of Johnson's drinking. Particularly poignant is the scene in which Johnson says that he went to pieces when Bonny left him. That's a common trait of alcoholic denial, excuse and blame. He puts it elsewhere - on his wife. Those of us with experience in 12-step programs know this as the "poor me" attitude. It oozes self-pity and smothers any need for one to come to grips with his or her own culpability.
But, there's more to the "treatment" of alcoholism than that in this movie. The film takes place in the 1920s. That was during prohibition when speakeasies flourished across America. It was also before the birth of 12-Step programs to treat addictions. Alcoholics Anonymous got its start in 1935, and spread widely only after World War II.
The film shows Bonny Kane unable to do anything to stop Johnson's drinking or tackle his alcoholism. She falls into a trap and role that continues to enable the alcoholic to be what he is. It's interesting that the movie doesn't ever use the words alcoholic or alcoholism. Even when Johnson is in a hospital ward at New York's Bellevue Hospital, there's no mention of alcoholism.
Dailey's performance overall was excellent of an alcoholic personality. He promises to quit and has his last drink, but doesn't follow through. He hides empty bottles. He doesn't hesitate to offer someone else a drink or have one when someone else suggests it. He has no remorse about his boozing or its effect on his wife. But he does love her. That's the insidiousness of alcoholism. In the hospital and later, he genuinely looks to be suffering from the disease. The only obviously unbelievable scene is at the end when Skid Johnson has all the energy and vitality to do the last song and dance number with Bonny Kane.
Dailey received his only Oscar nomination for his role in this film, and it was well deserved. But for Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" in 1948, Dan Dailey may well have won the best actor Oscar that year.
Isn't this a loose remake of...
AlsExGal11 November 2017
Warning: Spoilers
... 1929's Dance of Life? I could be wrong, plus that original film was Paramount, not Fox, but the scripts are loosely the same, although this film lacks the pathos of the original, if that was indeed the pattern for this one.
From 20th Century Fox comes this 1948 musical comedy-drama about a married pair of vaudeville performers. Betty Grable stars as the showgirl wife, with Dan Dailey as the hard-drinking rising star husband, whose song-and-dance comedy routines have caught the attention of Broadway producers who want him to headline a new revue. He goes, but the wife stays with the smaller troupe, and Dailey's increasing fame is only matched by his drinking. Eventually things fall apart, but only after numerous stagebound musical numbers, including one terrible bit with Dailey surrounded by several female back-up dancers in brown-skin make-up as blackface shoeshine girls. That last bit is probably a big reason why this film is rarely shown anymore.
Grable once again fails to make an impression on me: she's not terrible, but in no way memorable either. Dailey earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and he has a big, manic meltdown scene, followed by a pitiful bit in the Bellevue drunk tank. He's good, but most of his performance is just his usual large and loud musical shtick. Richard Arlen plays a level-headed alternative for Grable's affections, and there are welcome supporting parts by James Gleason, Jack Oakie and June Havoc. This may be better appreciated by more avid musical fans than myself, but for me it's a one-and-done.
From 20th Century Fox comes this 1948 musical comedy-drama about a married pair of vaudeville performers. Betty Grable stars as the showgirl wife, with Dan Dailey as the hard-drinking rising star husband, whose song-and-dance comedy routines have caught the attention of Broadway producers who want him to headline a new revue. He goes, but the wife stays with the smaller troupe, and Dailey's increasing fame is only matched by his drinking. Eventually things fall apart, but only after numerous stagebound musical numbers, including one terrible bit with Dailey surrounded by several female back-up dancers in brown-skin make-up as blackface shoeshine girls. That last bit is probably a big reason why this film is rarely shown anymore.
Grable once again fails to make an impression on me: she's not terrible, but in no way memorable either. Dailey earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and he has a big, manic meltdown scene, followed by a pitiful bit in the Bellevue drunk tank. He's good, but most of his performance is just his usual large and loud musical shtick. Richard Arlen plays a level-headed alternative for Grable's affections, and there are welcome supporting parts by James Gleason, Jack Oakie and June Havoc. This may be better appreciated by more avid musical fans than myself, but for me it's a one-and-done.
Dire
AAdaSC22 April 2018
One point for the technicolour costumes, 1 point for Betty Grable and 1 point for the uptempo song and dance numbers even though Dan Dailey manages to completely murder the song "Don't Bring Lulu".
Dailey (Skid) is a vaudeville entertainer along with wife Betty Grable (Bonny). He gets an opportunity elsewhere but messes up and returns to play happy families.....Wow......how boring was that! The cast are unlikable apart from Grable but even she demonstrates unreasonable and unrealistic behavioural traits when it comes to her relationship with Dailey. This film gave my wife cushion rage which manifested itself at the end of the film. We wanted to like this film but just couldn't. I dozed off as it was so boring. Dailey was nominated for an oscar!!!!!!!!!! WTF!!!! It's a corny load of nonsense.
Dailey (Skid) is a vaudeville entertainer along with wife Betty Grable (Bonny). He gets an opportunity elsewhere but messes up and returns to play happy families.....Wow......how boring was that! The cast are unlikable apart from Grable but even she demonstrates unreasonable and unrealistic behavioural traits when it comes to her relationship with Dailey. This film gave my wife cushion rage which manifested itself at the end of the film. We wanted to like this film but just couldn't. I dozed off as it was so boring. Dailey was nominated for an oscar!!!!!!!!!! WTF!!!! It's a corny load of nonsense.
A drunken hoofer and his enabler wife strut their stuff through burlesque, him barely.
mark.waltz28 June 2018
Warning: Spoilers
In Academy Awards history, there are several nomination omissions that make people go "huh?", and one nomination in that particular category that gives them a double take. Such is the race for Best Actor in 1948 when Humphrey Bogart was not nominated for his highly praised performance in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and somehow slipped in Dan Dailey in this 20th Century Fox musical about the good old days of vaudeville and burlesque. There's a little more to his performance than just singing and dancing and clowning and a little bit of a plot. In this case, Dailey is a serious alcoholic, so that makes the light-hearted memories of him and Betty Grable in the previous year's "Mother Wore Tights" go right down the drain. While their first entry was highly above average (dealing with a vaudeville couple struggling with being always on the road yet trying to remain good parents), this one goes up a notch. It's a bit dour with its combination of hoofing and hooching, but Dailey certainly is worthy of praise, his drunk scenes every bit as believable as Ray Milland's in the 1945 Best Picture winner "The Lost Weekend".
Musically, this isn't really memorable, but that's a good thing because then all the focus is on the trauma of this married couple's issues of addiction, loyalty, recovery and atonement. Previously filmed as both "The Dance of Life" (1929) and "Swing High, Swing Low" (1937), this third version of the play "Burlesque" (which introduced Barbara Stanwyck in the Grable role of the long-suffering partner and wife) has the Fox color but not the lightness of their other big musicals of the 1940's. Dailey is already seen as a lush from the start, perhaps not constantly schnockered, but definitely someone who would get a major tongue lashing from Carrie Nation. He has already nearly been unfaithful with chorus girl Jean Wallace who gets a severe tongue lashing and threat of violence from Grable, and when Dailey goes to New York on his own and ends up with Wallace as his partner, the steel magnolia Grable follows him there to put an end to the threat of the end of her marriage. But finding booze bottles hidden in his hotel room makes her concerned, although she really does nothing but sit back and pray that he wakes up and smells some hot black coffee.
The second leads are played by Jack Oakie and the former "Baby" June (Havoc), making Grable go from Haver to Havoc in just a few years, having appeared opposite June Haver in "The Dolly Sisters". Havoc, with her throaty no-nonsense voice, is playing a role similar to the parts that Veda Ann Borg and Iris Adrian played, and gets many of the film's best lines. There are some looks at old vaudeville routines that were later paid tribute to in the big 1979 Broadway musical revue "Sugar Babies" and later given a gay twist in the Nathan Lane play "The Nance". James Gleason gives his usual no-nonsense but slightly buffoonish performance as a theater manager, with veteran actor Richard Arlen ("Wings") as the respectable businessman who falls in love with Grable and wants to take her away from the trauma that is Dailey's alcoholism. Dailey has one amazingly disturbing scene where he realizes that his marriage to Grable is over (already having been ended through divorce) and gets proceedingly drunker and drunker, crying through the booze has he hobbles out of her hotel after having crashed a little party in her room with Oakie and Gleason.
I can see why Dailey was even remotely considered a potential nominee, and if you see this after pondering why he was nominated and not Bogart, you will begin to see past the idea that he just didn't belong there, even in a year when Gene Kelly in "The Pirate" and Fred Astaire in "Easter Parade" gave first rate performances in big movie musicals. A similar film that year (Warner Brothers' "April Showers") basically told the same story with Jack Carson in the Dailey role and Ann Sothern as his wife, but this has much darker elements that the technicolor cannot hide. Of the musical numbers, only the title song stands out, the rest rather standard. I felt that Grable's hairstyle seemed much too modern to be believable for the era that this was set in, and I also wish that the writers had given her character a bigger backbone to play hardball with the husband she obviously loved to get him sober and not go through a divorce when it is obvious what the conclusion will be.
Musically, this isn't really memorable, but that's a good thing because then all the focus is on the trauma of this married couple's issues of addiction, loyalty, recovery and atonement. Previously filmed as both "The Dance of Life" (1929) and "Swing High, Swing Low" (1937), this third version of the play "Burlesque" (which introduced Barbara Stanwyck in the Grable role of the long-suffering partner and wife) has the Fox color but not the lightness of their other big musicals of the 1940's. Dailey is already seen as a lush from the start, perhaps not constantly schnockered, but definitely someone who would get a major tongue lashing from Carrie Nation. He has already nearly been unfaithful with chorus girl Jean Wallace who gets a severe tongue lashing and threat of violence from Grable, and when Dailey goes to New York on his own and ends up with Wallace as his partner, the steel magnolia Grable follows him there to put an end to the threat of the end of her marriage. But finding booze bottles hidden in his hotel room makes her concerned, although she really does nothing but sit back and pray that he wakes up and smells some hot black coffee.
The second leads are played by Jack Oakie and the former "Baby" June (Havoc), making Grable go from Haver to Havoc in just a few years, having appeared opposite June Haver in "The Dolly Sisters". Havoc, with her throaty no-nonsense voice, is playing a role similar to the parts that Veda Ann Borg and Iris Adrian played, and gets many of the film's best lines. There are some looks at old vaudeville routines that were later paid tribute to in the big 1979 Broadway musical revue "Sugar Babies" and later given a gay twist in the Nathan Lane play "The Nance". James Gleason gives his usual no-nonsense but slightly buffoonish performance as a theater manager, with veteran actor Richard Arlen ("Wings") as the respectable businessman who falls in love with Grable and wants to take her away from the trauma that is Dailey's alcoholism. Dailey has one amazingly disturbing scene where he realizes that his marriage to Grable is over (already having been ended through divorce) and gets proceedingly drunker and drunker, crying through the booze has he hobbles out of her hotel after having crashed a little party in her room with Oakie and Gleason.
I can see why Dailey was even remotely considered a potential nominee, and if you see this after pondering why he was nominated and not Bogart, you will begin to see past the idea that he just didn't belong there, even in a year when Gene Kelly in "The Pirate" and Fred Astaire in "Easter Parade" gave first rate performances in big movie musicals. A similar film that year (Warner Brothers' "April Showers") basically told the same story with Jack Carson in the Dailey role and Ann Sothern as his wife, but this has much darker elements that the technicolor cannot hide. Of the musical numbers, only the title song stands out, the rest rather standard. I felt that Grable's hairstyle seemed much too modern to be believable for the era that this was set in, and I also wish that the writers had given her character a bigger backbone to play hardball with the husband she obviously loved to get him sober and not go through a divorce when it is obvious what the conclusion will be.
Solid Grable Vehicle
boblipton26 April 2020
Dan Dailey is a hoofer who goes from burlesque houses to Broadway, leaving wife Betty Grable behind. When she catches up with him, he's developed a drinking problem.
It's the third big-screen version of Hopkins-Watter play Burlesque, and it's given the Technicolor gloss that the company gave to all of Miss Grable's musicals in the period. The musical numbers are baggy-pants affairs. It's directed by Walter Lang, Fox's specialist for musical dramas, but since it's a vehicle for Miss Grable, everything is sunny.
Dailey was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor. For some reason, he lost to Laurence Olivier's performance in a little number called HAMLET.
It's the third big-screen version of Hopkins-Watter play Burlesque, and it's given the Technicolor gloss that the company gave to all of Miss Grable's musicals in the period. The musical numbers are baggy-pants affairs. It's directed by Walter Lang, Fox's specialist for musical dramas, but since it's a vehicle for Miss Grable, everything is sunny.
Dailey was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor. For some reason, he lost to Laurence Olivier's performance in a little number called HAMLET.
Great Cast revives Burlesque
dizozza10 November 2013
Warning: Spoilers
In the screening last night everyone was moved and impressed with how the song and dance played against a believable relationship of dependency. Some remarked upon how harrowing the movie becomes, and that it really doesn't have a happy ending, just an acknowledgment that the dependency is mutual. The two other reviews here well describe the relationship: the fellow is talented but rudderless without a good woman, his wife. He gives 1000% as an entertainer. Someone who actually cares about him needs to reign him in. He is eager to please and will break his back in the process. He's portrayed by the real thing, Dan Dailey. His eyes say it all. He cannot be left alone. It's a scary and accurate portrayal, and Betty Grable balances his intensity with her own nobility and sincerity. This movie dispels any preconceived notions of them as lightweights. The play is engaging (I have Sherry Britton's copy of the play) and this movie adaptation (by Lamar Trotti) may improve upon it. The songs and skits improve with further viewing. They represent a compendium of Burlesque! The songs include Ray Henderson's The Birth of the Blues, Dan's flashy song and dance number announcing his arrival in New York, performed with help from little tanned shoe shine girls. Dan Dailey himself wears an eye- catching green shiny suit, and dances pretty beautifully. Other memorable songs are What Did I Do and By the Way (Josef Myro) ... Betty Grable asks What Did I Do? outside the bar by the harbor, and the title number, Bill Munro's When My Baby Smiles at Me is simply sung at the piano. It's an essential movie for anyone interested in furthering the legend of burlesque in the United States. The supporting cast is great. Please note James Gleason, particularly appealing as the mid-level producer of the road shows.
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