Bathing Beauty **** (1944, Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Basil Rathbone, Jean Porter, Bill Goodwin, Nana Bryant, Xavier Cugat, Harry James) – Classic Movie Review 6,591

The Forties silver screen Bathing Beauty could only be Esther Williams, and here she is in all her Technicolor glory in MGM’s deliciously kitsch and richly entertaining 1944 musical movie.

The Forties silver screen Bathing Beauty could only be Esther Williams, and here she is in all her Technicolor glory in director George Sidney’s deliciously kitsch and richly entertaining 1944 musical with a see-through story and Red Skelton, Basil Rathbone, Bill Goodwin, Jean Porter and Nana Bryant as co-stars.

It was filmed as a vehicle for Red Skelton called Mr Co-Ed, but Williams caught the eye of MGM bosses and they quickly changed the title to Bathing Beauty, giving Williams the prominent billing and putting her on the poster in a bathing costume.

It took the talents of nine writers to come up with this fluff about silly songwriter Steve Elliott (Skelton) enrolling at a girls’ school to woo back swim teacher Caroline Brooks (Williams), who stages a water pageant. The overhead shots of these astonishing swimming sequences, elaborately choreographed by Busby Berkeley, have become iconic – and much parodied, especially in The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I (1981).

Basil Rathbone plays New York producer George Adams, Bill Goodwin plays Professor Willis Evans, Jean Porter plays Jean Allenwood and Nana Bryant plays Dean Clinton.

The 1944 US Theatrical Poster for Bathing Beauty.

The water ballet directed by John Murray Anderson dazzles the eye, popular Latin American rhythms with music from Xavier Cugat and his band and Harry James and his orchestra tickle the ear, and the MGM studio provides a no-expense-spared production. The studio found its coffers overflowing as Williams the water-babe caught the public’s imagination. The lavish $2,361,000 budget translated to a $6,892,000 success, resulting in a profit of $2,132,000.

Also in the cast are Ethel Smith, Carlos Ramirez, Donald Meek as drunken lawyer Chester Klazenfrantz, Margaret Dumont, Janis Paige (in her film debut), Ann Codee, Lina Romay, Jacqueline Dalya, Elspeth Dudgeon, Dorothy Ford, Harry Hayden, Russell Hicks, Almira Sessions, Ray Teal, Dorothy Adams and Francis Pierlot.

Esther Williams emerges from the water during the breathtaking finale of Bathing Beauty.

The story is by Kenneth Earl, M M Musselman and Curtis Kenyon, the adaptation is by Joseph Schrank, and the screenplay is by Dorothy Kingsley, Allen Boretz and Frank Waldman, with an uncredited George Oppenheimer, as well as Buster Keaton as uncredited gag consultant.

Bathing Beauty’s swim pool sequences are shot at the Lakeside Country Club in San Fernando Valley. As it was January it was cold and the club lawns were brown so a crew spray painted the grass green, which lasted the week of shooting but ruined the grass, and another crew had to re-seed the lawns in the spring.

Skelton was told to shave his red chest hair for the swim sequences but reluctantly agreed only after MGM paid him $200 in cash and allowed him to save all of his chest curls in a plastic bag!

Jean Porter (December 8, 1922 – January 13, 2018).

RIP Jean Porter (December 8, 1922 – January 13, 2018).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,591

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