I clicked on this film fully expecting a 1942 film titled Cairo would be a war movie. You know Rommel or Montgomery. Maybe a spy film. George Raft or Peter Lorre in there somewhere. Possibly William Bendix as a G.I. When the credits began to roll I had my doubts. Robert Young. Ok. But Jeanette MacDonald, Ethel Waters and Dooley Wilson? I don't think so but I stuck with it because I have been wanting to watch a few Jeanette MacDonald films - a genre on to itself. Well, ok with that voice and the high notes she can hit I figured maybe she sinks the German fleet. It turns out to be a musical comedy and yes a spy film with more charm than a bundle of newly born kittens. It hit all my soft spots of which there are too many. I loved this silly little ditty of a film and have no excuses for doing so. The comedy is cute, a couple songs are wonderful and it of course has a serving of patriotic apple pie.

 

MacDonald's singing is an acquired taste now - she has no soul in her voice - though she tries in one collaboration with the great Ethel Waters - very operatic as she knocks out scales like a heavyweight. A soprano who could stretch a note from Brooklyn to Toledo. It was a style that went out of fashion with her and Deanna Durbin retiring. But in her time her films with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy were very popular though later mocked a bit. Now who remembers any of them except old film fans? The period ones she did with Chevalier are classics and a couple with Lubitsch. Her pairing with Eddy went on for eight films and were very popular. This film is a fine introduction to her. She is funny, homey and only sings a few songs and one of them  - a medley - is great. And she brings on Ethel to sing a few too.


The plot is goofy - reminded me a bit of a screwball Preston Sturges comedy. Young plays Homer Smith a young journalist from a small town in northern California. He wins some prize that allows him to go report on the war. The next thing we know he is on a raft in the Mediterranean. Another man floats by and joins him. When they land the Italian army tries to surrender to them but they have no time. The man (Reginald Owen) asks Homer to deliver a message to a woman in a bar in Cairo if he doesn't make it and Homer does. He confides that he is British intelligence. Homer makes it, finds the woman and relays the message. She tells him that Brit Intel suspects that the movie star and singer Marcia Warren may be the head of the Nazi spy ring. She happens to be in Cairo with her maid (Ethel) singing for the troops.

That sets him off on a story - he becomes her butler - she in turn is told that he is a Nazi spy by British Intel. The real British Intel. The woman at the bar is in fact a Nazi flown in from Berlin to block up the Suez Canal by blowing up British ships. Her conspirators are Lionel Atwill and Eduardo Ciannelli. It has some funny moments such as the two of them under a table, her with a gun, him with a cold, accusing each other of being Nazis. Earlier they had argued which part of California was best - he says have you ever been to San Francisco and she replies yes, once with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy and the joint fell apart. An in joke to her film San Francisco with those two. Another film reference is when Dooley Wilson (Play it again, Sam) hears Ethel sing and falls in love. But he is in Arab garb - she asks him why - I was in Hollywood trying to act and all I could get were roles as an Arab. I decided I might as well become one. And in the end Homer is offered a role in Hollywood and she tells him how to play to the camera - never turn your back to the camera -  profile, profile, profile she says.