Pagan Love Song ** (1950, Esther Williams, Howard Keel, Rita Moreno) – Classic Movie Review 12,794

MGM’s 1950 Technicolor romantic musical film Pagan Love Song stars high-spirited Esther Williams and Howard Keel, with the 19-year-old Rita Moreno in her first major role.

Director Robert Alton’s 1950 MGM American Technicolor romantic musical film Pagan Love Song stars high-spirited Esther Williams and Howard Keel, with the 19-year-old Rita Moreno in her third film and first major role.

Set on the Polynesian isle of Tahiti, it was shot on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

Singing American tourist Hazard Endicott (Keel) sails to Tahiti, throws a coin in the water for good luck and up pops swimming lovely Mimi Bennett (Williams), whom he mistakes for a local.

Alas, this kitsch, airheaded show is well below par for an MGM musical, though Keel and Williams are high-spirited and fun. Producer Arthur Freed wrote the title number back in 1929 with Nacio Herb Brown, but his new songs with Harry Warren’s music aren’t in the same class. It comes alive just twice in its two highlights — a water ballet and the sequence with Williams singing ‘The Sea of the Moon’ — and it is camp and colourful.

Esther Williams’s singing voice is dubbed by Betty Wand.

The screenplay by Robert Nathan and Jerry Davis comes from William S Stone’s 1946 novel Tahiti Landfall.

The cast are Esther Williams as Mimi Bennett, Howard Keel as Hazard Endicott, Minna Gombell as Kate, Charles Mauu as Tavee, Rita Moreno as Teuru, Philip Costa, Diane Leliani, Ben Chapman, Carlo Cook, Marcelle Corday, Birdie De Bolt, Charles Freund, Bill Kalilos, Sam Maikai, and Helen Rapoza.

It was a Christmas treat, premiering on 23 December 1950 in New York City and released on 29 December 1950.

After going above budget by $400,000, the film cost $1,920,000 and earned $3,360,000, resulting in a profit of $108,000, which MGM regarded as a relatively disappointing result for an Esther Williams film at this time.

Director Robert Alton took over when Williams refused to work with Stanley Donen after filming the previous year’s Take Me Out to the Ball Game together. While filming, she nearly drowned and also realised she was pregnant.

It runs just 76 minutes, one of MGM’s shortest musicals, one minute shorter than is follow-up Texas Carnival (1951), also with Esther Williams and Howard Keel.

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 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,794

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