I expect people
have been anxiously waiting for me to review another Sonja Henie film. Well,
here it is. The Ice Skating Queen of Norway or as she was also called Little
Miss Moneybags is back with another tale of romance, music and ice. It is
hard to relate just how big she was in the 1930s and 40s - the biggest ice
skater in the world and this was before TV and social media. She won the
Olympics three times. I imagine modern day skaters would blow her away, but
she is wonderfully graceful and those spins make my head spin. Everyone knew
who she was and then she came to Hollywood to make movies - thirteen films
in all before retiring. This is one of the reasons I like the old films -
stars like this now forgotten and film genres long gone. Ice Skating, B film
series, singing cowboys and Big Bands. All very popular once upon a time.
Lightweight paper-thin films had their place. This film floats by as if I
was sleeping. Did I really just watch Cesar Romero run around a hotel, in
and out of rooms, under tables for 20 minutes in his long underwear? Yup.
The days when long underwear was shocking. And Romero was a big Latin star.
A solid cast saves this film from disappearing
before your eyes. Besides Henie and Romero, there is also Carole Landis,
Cornel Wilde, S.Z Sakall, Woody Herman and his band and tragically Jack Oakie.
Oakie is more annoying than a nail in your foot and for reasons that elude
me quite popular back then. No one said audiences had better taste 80 years
ago. The most surprising thing about this fluff is that it was directed by
John Brahm. Another refugee from Nazi Germany who had served in the infantry
in WW I, he made it to Hollywood and directed two classic suspense films
- The Lodger and Hanover Square - but much of the rest of his career was
directing films now forgotten.
Besides the two ice skating set pieces and
the music from Herman, there is a plot of sorts. Oakie and Wilde run a hotel
where there seems to be a lot of snow. But they have no customers, just a
lot of bills. Oakie is able to con a Norwegian millionaire and his niece
into coming to stay at the hotel and then conning the millionaire (Sakall)
to buy half of it. His niece (Henie) puts on shows and falls in love with
Wilde. This is a few years before Wilde became an adventure star in B films
- though his Naked Prey in 1965 is a classic. At this point he is a fallow
field with the charisma of a saltshaker. Romero and Landis are part of Herman's
band. And romance and laughs breaks out. This being 1943, the film takes
the opportunity to bring in some wartime propaganda when Norway is invaded
by the Nazis. When Henie died in 1969 she had a bank roll of $47 million
- now equivalent to $400 million. So, she did ok for herself.
