Somebody Loves Me *** (1952, Betty Hutton, Ralph Meeker, Robert Keith, Adele Jergens, Jack Benny) – Classic Movie Review 11,451

Writer-director Irving S Brecher’s 1952 Paramount Pictures film Somebody Loves Me stars fizzy Betty Hutton as vaudeville singer Blossom Seeley, who married her entertainer partner Benny Fields (Ralph Meeker), in this fairly pleasant, if soft-hearted showbiz biopic. The story spans ‘the colorful era that was born with the San Francisco earthquake and ended with the stock market crash.’

The many, many songs are the thing, and a powered-up Hutton certainly has the oomph for them: the George Gershwin title number Somebody Loves Me’, ‘Way Down Yonder in New Orleans’, ‘I Cried for You’, ‘Smiles’, ‘Rose Room’, ‘Jealous’. Meeker, though, is miscast and uncomfortable. Jack Benny pops in unbilled as himself.

New songs by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston: ‘Honey Oh My Honey’, ‘Love Him’, ‘Thanks To You’.

George Barnes’s Technicolor cinematography is a big plus.

Also in the cast are Robert Keith as Sam Doyle, Adele Jergens as Nola Beach, Billie Bird, Sid Tomack, Ludwig Stossel, Jack Benny, Henry Slate, Nick Adams, Bea Allen, George Chandler, Les Clark, James Cross, Lester Dorr, Jimmie Dundee, Franklyn Farnum, Dick Gordon, Virginia Hall, Howard Joslin, Donald Kerr, Kenneth MacDonald, Sydney Mason, Charles O’Curran, Milton Parsons, Charles Quirk, and Herb Vigran.

The popular song ‘Somebody Loves Me’, with music written by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ballard MacDonald and Buddy DeSylva, was published in 1924 and featured in George White’s Scandals of 1924.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,451

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