And The Angels Sing is the kind of movie that the major studios would only have issued during World War II -- work was hard, defense plant shifts were long, and people needed entertainment and weren't always too picky about how well put together the entertainment was. Not that And The Angels Sing is a bad movie -- it's just not terribly good, despite being thoroughly professional and possessed of several entertaining sections, some of them very effective. And there's even a script with some interesting notions, perhaps even a message of sorts, buried in its layers of misunderstanding and comedic deception -- the problem is that none of it really hangs together as a movie. For starters, there's Fred MacMurray as Happy Marshall, the bandleader whose good nature, mixed with a gambling habit he can't lick, combine to form the larcenous impulses in him that drive the plot but make the movie difficult to watch -- are we supposed to like this guy or not, one wonders, as his casual lies and deceptions mount up, admittedly in comical fashion, across the first half of the movie. The second half revolves around his mostly thwarted efforts to pay back what he owes the four Angel sisters, and their efforts to collect the money he owes them and, on the part of two of them (played by Dorothy Lamour and Betty Hutton) to sort out their rival feelings of attraction to him. And it's the Angel sisters that are the big stumbling block in the writing -- as portrayed by Hutton, Lamour, Diana Lynn, and Mimi Chandler, they resemble a broad caricature of the siblings in Four Daughters (or the musical remake, Young At Heart); they're four fiercely independent girls, in keeping with the wartime ethos; they're fiercely loyal to each other, whether browbeating their widowered father (Raymond Walburn) or defending against the unwanted or untoward advances of any man, ganging up on the latter with a level of team-work worthy of a wrestling tag-team (or Popeye's rambunctious nephews, when the slapstick starts). But they hate doing the one thing that they are good at professionally, which is singing together. And somehow, the script never pulls together that side of the story and the side dealing with Happy Marshall's machinations. Each half is funny, the Angel sisters' antics -- and especially Betty Hutton's musical/comedy contribution -- and Happy's interactions with the band, and especially his partner (Eddie Foy, Jr.). The script tries to make some points, about right and wrong and relationships, playing off of certain conventions and stereotypes of the period -- this is the middle of World War II, when most of the men of draft age were off fighting, so there's some humor at the expense of the eccentric, prissy Oliver (Frank Albertson), the would-be boyfriend of one of the sisters, and his invention, a mechanical potato-peeler. The script also seems to want to make a point about the limitations of female resourcefulness and independence -- the Angels do fine making their way, and defending themselves until, confronted by this fact about themselves, they turn on the man who loves them most (apart from their father) -- and their father sabotages their all-for-one defense. If the movie weren't such a confusing (and, yes, often enjoyable) mishmash of music and comedy, one might even suspect that the writers had some kind of a message. But in this case, the point seems to have mostly been to get a picture made and released -- though Paramount apparently thought so little of this movie, that it stayed in the vault for well over half-a-year after it was finished. Still, it has lots of fun moments, for lovers of slapstick, musical comedy, and Betty Hutton's talents, and Dorothy Lamour's Brooklyn-ese interlude with Herman (or, as he says, "Hoiman"), played by Frank Faylen, culminating with a painfully slapstick dance routine, is one of the highlights that makes this worth seeing.
by Bruce Eder
review
