Konterr Brilliant and touching

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

kidboots Although the nudity, violence and the bizarre "Sweet Marijuana" song bothered very few people (a few state censors excised a song line referring to "dirty hosannas"), with the tightening of the production code six weeks after it opened things changed. "Murder at the Vanities" would have been impossible to make 6 months after it was released, as it was "Sweet Marijuana" was eventually excised from most prints. It had been a moderately successful Broadway show in 1933 featuring two movie people - Olga Baclanova and Bela Lugosi. The film starred Kitty Carlisle and Carl Brisson. Carl Brisson had been a Danish matinée idol (there is a segment in a Greta Garbo biography where it described her excitement at meeting him backstage when he toured her town) and had also been the star in a couple of Hitchcock silents ("The Ring" and "The Manxman"). Kitty Carlisle was a young, classically trained singer who made her debut in this movie. "Murder at the Vanities" was often compared to "Wonder Bar" in that it had illicit sex and a view that murder was justifiable when it rid the world of a thoroughly horrible person. Unlike "Wonder Bar" it boasted of a big hit song "Cocktails For Two". Earl Carroll's shows were the bawdiest on Broadway and the whole movie is a tribute to him. In a movie that provides more music than thrills, it all takes place during the opening night of his new show. It starts out with a forgettable song "Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go" but the chorus girls provide a startling tableau - they are lampshades, powder boxes, vanity mirrors - it is an unbelievable sight. Backstage it is all happening - Erik (Brisson), the leading man, is all set to marry Ann (Carlisle) the leading lady but Rita (Gertrude Michael) is all set to spill the dirt about Erik's private life. The little old wardrobe mistress, Mrs. Smith (Maude Eburne) is really Erik's mother and thirty years before as Elsie Singer, a star of the musical stage, she killed a man. Back on the stage after another song "Live and Love Tonight" which seemed to have a lot in common with "Spin a Little Web of Dreams" from "Fashions of 1934", Gertrude Michael sings the surreal "Sweet Marijuana" complete with chorus girls appearing as cactus flowers - "you alone will bring my lover back to me, even though I know it's just a fantasy" before one of the girls finds blood dripping on her arm.The body is of Sadie Evans (Gail Patrick) a private investigator Erik has hired to find out what Rita had taken from his room. Rita, who is a complete cow to everyone, including her little slavey maid (Dorothy Stickney) who she kicks out of the way, gets her comeuppance after "Ebony Rhapsody" that Duke Ellington gives class to. After her murder everyone is a suspect, including Homer (Charles Middleton, no less) who would do anything for nice Mrs. Smith. It is easy to see why Carl Brisson didn't catch on with American audiences. He didn't seem completely comfortable in his role. Kitty Carlisle, while very fetching, didn't seem to click either. There were a few in the cast who did though - cutie Toby Wing may have had her "biggest" part as Nancy who is just raring to do something to Jack (Jack Oakie) - as he risquely puts it at the end "let's go and do it now"!!! Gail Patrick just at the start of her career but already perfecting her "sophisticated bitch"!!! This same year Gertrude Michael found fame as "The Notorious Sophie Lang" but she always remained an under-rated actress in my opinion. And buried in the chorus was Clara Lou Sheridan (soon to be Ann) and I am convinced I saw Dave O'Brien as one of the chorus boys.

gridoon2018 I doubt anyone had ever tried anything like this before - a musical murder mystery - and probably very few tried it afterwards; I did see a film with a similar recipe about a month ago ("Murder In The Blue Room", from 1944), but that one was a low-budget production with only three musical numbers; here, the numbers are many, long and lavish. The songs themselves are not especially memorable, with the exception of "Sweet Marijuana", and the astonishingly titled "The Rape Of The Rhapsody"!! The mystery is complicated enough to make you wonder just what the hell is going on, and the film also captures the hectic backstage atmosphere of the premiere night of a grand-scale theatrical show; there are even some touches of surrealism ("Mildred LaRue! Mildred LaRue!"). Gertrude Michael sinks her teeth into the role of a bad-to-the-bone diva and is more fun to watch than good-girl Kitty Carlisle. Probably considered racy in 1934, the film is rather tame by today's standards, but it's still worth your time. **1/2 out of 4.

Greensleeves Despite the lavish production numbers and wonderful costumes this film is a chore to watch. The murder-mystery plot is just a vehicle to mount the musical numbers on but it often brings the proceedings to a staggering halt besides not being very involving. Although there has obviously been a lot of money spent on them the numbers are badly staged and poorly photographed. It's obviously a pre-code film because the girls often wear very little clothing and there's even a song singing the praises of marijuana! The performances are all one-note although it's nice to see Carl Brisson in a musical but when Victor McLaglen, as the police Lieutenent, lurches into view for the umpteenth time on the hunt for clues, you may want to throw in the towel or at least fast-forward to the next number. Pity the patrons who were trapped in the cinema on its release though!

tedg This is one of the most interesting old movies you will ever see.Its designed to shamelessly display what are billed as the most beautiful women in the world — excepting its star, Kitty Carlisle, who looks like a train wreck comparatively. There's no nudity in the modern sense, but its all about young bodies and refreshingly not large breasts.The form is peculiar. Its half a stage show — patterned after real shows by a real theatrical pimp. The other half is a murder mystery in which two deaths occur and are solved while the opening night show goes on.The mystery isn't much. There's no detecting involved and its purpose is to allow us to know a few characters, every one of them repellent in some way, except for the anchor of the thing. Every girlie movie has a girl that is the center of illusion and in this one its Toby Wing playing one of several dumb blond stereotypes, this one more of the Betty Boop type: squeaky and solicitous, ignorant of when she is being ignored or even laughed at.The mystery does involve some sinister Germans and Americans who take matters into their own hands. It was between the wars with the Germans, and Hitler was newly the "fuhrer." Its the show that's the interesting thing here. The numbers aren't as polished as you might expect, but they are among the most interesting you'll ever see.One is a song about sweet marijuana where the backdrop is seven peyote buttons played by nude girls in blossom bottoms.Another is very strange and makes sense if you note the antiGerman subtext. Its a battle of music between that great American invention of jazz (led by Duke Ellington himself) and some "German" old stuff, played weakly here. Its led by Franz Lizst, accompanied by ghostly and bloodless aristocrats. The American piece clearly wins, ending with a dance which is sort of a combination between ordinary stage choreography and black boogie woogie.Its the only time I know in that era where black and white women dancers dance together. And the black women are every bit as lovely. Its shocking for the time, this celebration of the American spirit of woman. It ends by the Lizst character machine-gunning the Americans, killing all.The first number is about the girls themselves, "where do they come from?" Its simply about where these lovelies originate and has them migrating from the east and the west through the doors marked with the famous (and quite real) motto; "through these doors pass the most beautiful girls in the world." They pass through the doors and are transformed into nearly nude fruits of the sea and packaged cosmetics for us (the male viewers) to consume. Its quite overt.But to me the most interesting visually was a number which had our haplessly inept and ugly couple on an island singing. They are surrounded by waves made of feathers, undulated by scores of women: all longtressed blonds. Since they are credited as "chlorines," I suppose it matters that they are artificially blond, more submissive perhaps.Its not photographed as well as it could have been, but its about as cinematic as you will get to this notion of vast pools of sexually available women, a sea of pulchritude. That it was set up in the previous number with women in vaginally opening clamshells, shows that the designer of this thing surely knew what he was doing.One of the girls was Beryl Wallace, an Austrian Jewess with whom the man behind this was in love. Lucille Ball is also in there too.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.