Jupiter’s Darling *** (1954, Esther Williams, Howard Keel, George Sanders, Marge Champion, Gower Champion) – Classic Movie Review 5140

‘In 216 BC, Hannibal the Barbarian marched on Rome. The history of this great march has always been confused. This picture will do nothing to clear it up.’

High-spirited Esther Williams and Howard Keel are infectiously entertaining in George Sidney’s 1954 MGM fantasy comedy adventure film Jupiter’s Darling, which is to be cherished for its sheer absurdity and basic warm-heartedness.

Certainly, there are few dafter prospects than Williams and Keel as Amytis and Hannibal singing their way through a glossy CinemaScope MGM musical about the sacking of Rome, accompanied by a herd of trumpeting elephants.

Williams enjoys two camp and amusing musical swimming sequences. George Sanders also stars as Fabius Maximus, who loves his fiancée Amytis. The acceptable, if hardly inspired songs from Burton Lane (music) and Harold Adamson (lyrics) include ‘The Life of an Elephant’, ‘If This Be Slav’ry’, ‘Never Trust a Woman’, ‘I Had a Dream’ ‘This Is What I Love’, ‘Don’t Le This Night Get Away’, ‘Hannibal’s Victory March’. Saul Chaplin (music) and George Wells (lyrics) wrote the ‘Horatio’s Narration’ song.

Dorothy Kingsley’s screenplay is based on Robert E Sherwood’s play Road to Rome. Jo Ann Greer dubbed Williams’s singing voice. Some of Williams’s underwater scenes are performed by Ginger Stanley as Williams suffered a punctured eardrum.

Also in the cast are Marge Champion, Gower Champion, Norma Varden, Richard Hadyn, William Demarest, Douglass Dumbrille, Henry Corden, Michael Ansara, Martha Wentworth, John Olszewski, Chris Alcaide, Richard Hale, Mort Mills, Alberto Morin, Bruno VeSota, William Tannen, Jack Shea, Gene Roth, Frank Radcliffe, Paul Newlan, Tom Monrie, Michael Dugan, Frank Jaquet, Paul Maxey and Mitchell Kowall.

Esther Williams, America’s Mermaid, died on 6 June 2013, aged 91. She swam through more than a dozen splashy MGM musicals in the Forties and early Fifties, including On an Island with You (1948), Pagan Love Song (1950), Texas Carnival (1951), Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Easy to Love (1953) and Dangerous When Wet (1953). She made her debut in an Andy Hardy picture called Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1942) as Sheila Brooks, Mickey Rooney’s love interest.

Esther Williams recalled: ‘All they ever did for me at MGM was change my leading man and the water in my pool.’

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,140

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