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Advice & More October 2017

Silver Screen, Golden Years

Moon Over Miami – A Lingering Vacation

By Jacqueline T. Lynch

The movie presents a fantasy of what it might be like to leave your lousy job and travel to an exotic place where everybody is having fun. At that time, just before the war, most Americans never traveled even 50 miles from home, so one can imagine films were the closest a lot of folks came to a pleasure trip.

Moon Over Miami (1941) arrived in the last few months before Pearl Harbor changed America forever and while World War II had, for nearly two years, been destroying the lives of millions overseas. We were on the edge of that darkness, but everything was okay in Betty Grable’s world. We were like vacationers lingering over those last few moments on the beach. Our car is packed and we’re ready to head back to our regular lives – but we need one last look at the ocean, one last deep sniff of the salt air to sustain us.

Betty Grable and Carole Landis play sisters, waitresses in a Texas roadside drive-in restaurant, in this Technicolor film that opens with a sprightly song. They are carhops in cowgirl suits. Betty wants to give up this life of milkshakes and burgers to drive to Miami, where she believes she will meet a millionaire at a resort and become his wife. I don’t know what tourist brochure told her that would happen, but she’s convinced she’s got a shot. If Shakespeare had thought of opening a play like that, he would have done it. It just probably never occurred to him.

Charlotte Greenwood, reliably funny and dear, is their aunt who slings hash in the kitchen. The three of them dream of marrying rich men, and so they take off to Miami to hunt for some. Don Ameche and Robert Cummings, boyhood rivals, are the rich fellows. Since the girls do not want to appear as gold diggers, and because they have very little money between them, Betty gets to pretend to be a wealthy heiress to attract beaus, while Carole plays her secretary. Carole wears unflattering glasses because she is not supposed to outshine Betty, and because secretaries always wear unflattering glasses. It’s kind of a rule in Hollywood. No offense to you secretaries.

Charlotte Greenwood gets to be the maid. Dear, lanky Miss Greenwood had the most eloquent posture in Hollywood — with amazing flexibility and extension of her long limbs, she can make her point or just get a laugh by standing or leaning or taking a deep breath.

Both the dapper, young, white-dinner-jacketed rich fellows chase after Betty with her deep-red lipstick and her blonde hair pulled off her face in that impossible, and painful-looking upsweep.

There couldn’t have been any lacquer shortage in Hollywood during the war. With a pattern of giant stars on her dress and a giant bow in her hair, she is a walking exclamation point.
Cummings is the goofier, more hapless millionaire’s son, and Ameche is the more suave and savvy. We know who’s going to end up with Betty when we hear Mr. Cummings sing. He lumbers on bravely, but it’s a good thing he’s rich because he’ll never make any money singing.

However, Ameche’s smooth, gentle tenor is always a surprising contrast to his rather gravely speaking voice. He could be the last man in Hollywood sporting a pencil-thin mustache at this period, which was so popular during the Great Depression.

After some trickery and water sports shot on location in Ocala and Cypress Gardens in Florida to give the film a hint of travelogue, each girl walks away with her rich fellow, though Miss Greenwood is improbably paired with hotel barman Jack Haley. Miss Grable comes off as a bit of a petulant heel and a spoiled brat, but it’s her movie.

Frank and Harry Condos are the pair of specialty dancers who flank Betty Grable in a couple of numbers, and take the lead themselves in the “Seminole” number where a huge troupe of dancers dressed in patterns emulating the traditional clothing of Seminole Indians takes off in a colorful, somewhat stereotyped tribute to something sort of Florida-ish.

It’s a frothy vacation with glimpses of Florida in an era when location shooting was not common. We have a peek at Betty Grable in a white bathing suit, a precursor to her famous image as a war pinup. The movie presents a fantasy of what it might be like to leave your lousy job and travel to an exotic place where everybody is having fun. At that time, just before the war, most Americans never traveled even 50 miles from home, so one can imagine films were the closest a lot of folks came to a pleasure trip. The vacation only lasts 90 minutes, but you can’t beat the price.

 

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., and several other non- fiction books on history and classic films, as well as novels. www.JacquelineTLynch.com.

Meet Jacqueline