That's as in Alice, not Dunaway. But, you'll never know how much you'll love her until you see some of her pre 1940's work when she really was the queen of the Fox musical, filled with more pip and pizazz that the Zanuck studio would when they signed another blonde named Betty Grable. Back then, Alice Faye was pluckier and sexier, not quite like Harlow (as she had been during her earlier days), but certainly tougher, and not so Ann Harding like when they began to make her characters more long suffering.
The story here has her as a starving playwright who sings for her supper in an Italian restaurant after revealing she doesn't have money for the two healing helpings of spaghetti she scarfed down. Drunk theatrical producer Don Ameche decides to secretly help her out, with objections from his boss, Charles Winninger, and his socialite stalker, Louise Hovick, aka Gypsy Rose Lee, who claims to be married to him. Ameche's aided by the silly Ritz Brothers, and by chance, Ameche tries to get her to star in his big musical (which she hates) so he can get rid of his pain in the butt diva star, Phyllis Brooks, whom everybody seems to hate. Clara Blandick ("Auntie Em") plays a nasty customer in the music shop in Faye's home town which indicates why she left there in the first place. I'm wondering, however, if there was an opening scene with Faye cut from the film in this provincial hovel of babbity people like Blandick that made her decide to leave in the first place. Hovick/Gypsy is so camp in her deliciously bad acting, but it fits her off screen image.
This is the 20th Century Fox musical at its delightful best, with Faye joined by real life husband #1 Tony Martin in the show within the movie scenes. Ameche gets to sing as well, a sign of things to come when he later sent on to become a musical comedy star himself on Broadway. Of course, this has all the formulatic elements that many 1930's and 40's musicals had, but it works here very well. The Ritz Brothers are very funny in a production number about long underwear. The title may be true in life, buy as far as this film is concerned, it couldn't be further from the truth, but that's a good thing.
The story here has her as a starving playwright who sings for her supper in an Italian restaurant after revealing she doesn't have money for the two healing helpings of spaghetti she scarfed down. Drunk theatrical producer Don Ameche decides to secretly help her out, with objections from his boss, Charles Winninger, and his socialite stalker, Louise Hovick, aka Gypsy Rose Lee, who claims to be married to him. Ameche's aided by the silly Ritz Brothers, and by chance, Ameche tries to get her to star in his big musical (which she hates) so he can get rid of his pain in the butt diva star, Phyllis Brooks, whom everybody seems to hate. Clara Blandick ("Auntie Em") plays a nasty customer in the music shop in Faye's home town which indicates why she left there in the first place. I'm wondering, however, if there was an opening scene with Faye cut from the film in this provincial hovel of babbity people like Blandick that made her decide to leave in the first place. Hovick/Gypsy is so camp in her deliciously bad acting, but it fits her off screen image.
This is the 20th Century Fox musical at its delightful best, with Faye joined by real life husband #1 Tony Martin in the show within the movie scenes. Ameche gets to sing as well, a sign of things to come when he later sent on to become a musical comedy star himself on Broadway. Of course, this has all the formulatic elements that many 1930's and 40's musicals had, but it works here very well. The Ritz Brothers are very funny in a production number about long underwear. The title may be true in life, buy as far as this film is concerned, it couldn't be further from the truth, but that's a good thing.