Moonlight Masquerade

When Paul Harvey and Jed Prouty formed their oil partnership, one of the clauses stated that when Prouty's daughter (he didn't have one at the time) married Harvey's son in Havana within a month of her 21st birthday, they would get one third of the business. Now she has turned 21, so it's off to Havana, looking for the escape clause that if one refuses, the other gets the oil wells. Dennis O'Keefe plans on going through with the marriage at his father's instance, unless he can get this girl he has never met to dislike him. Jane Frazee's plan is more elaborate. She hires acrobatic dancer Betty Kean to masquerade as her, while Frazee plays her secretary. Miss Kean's limberness will fascinate O'Keefe, he'll marry her and lose the oil wells.

Except when they are taking the train to Havana -- yes, they're coming from New York. Don't expect me to understand it -- O'Keefe and Frazee meet under their fake names and fall in love.

It's a very pleasant romantic comedy, in no small part because whenever director John Auer feels a need to distract you, there's a good comic dancing interlude. Miss Kean is an excellent eccentric dancer. She does a few moves on her own, but in one she's paired with an excellent Black tap trio called 'The Three Chocolateers', and in another with Eddie Foy Jr., who's funny as a busted British count.

I wonder why this is such a neglected one - despite two delicious actors, Dennis O'Keefe, Jane Frazee in the lead roles. No synopsis, no review and not even Score points !

This is a neat RomCom, with a bit of music thrown in (not very hummable though). The basic premise is- two friend - but friendly-foe business partners make a strange pact while starting the business. Their children, not yet born, would marry.

The basic premise was that the children would be the only offspring of the respective parents, and they would be of opposite genders (the same gender marriage was not something one could openly talk about in 1940s) unless one wanted to be Oscar Wilde-ed. Anyway as things has to happen, this being a movie, the babies, not yet born, are born accordingly, and the absence/ non mention of either mothers, seem to be the reason of their being only child.

On marriage, the newly-weds was to be gifted one third of the empire. But there was a catch- if they don't, then the refusing offspring loses his/her portion and the injured (refused) son/daughter gets the whole of the third portion. And in that case, it also creates a stake unbalance - since effectively the injured child's family (father) would be two-third share holder.

The two pawns in the father's board - have their own mind. One (the son) is a habitual skirt-chaser (especially of his secretaries') whereas the girl - educated in Europe used to fall for the Stiff-collared nobility - the current fiancee being a count. Both being aware of the condition - in fact the whole organisation was aware of it - manipulates the conditions so that the other one is forced to refuse the alliance. The girl, the smarter one, hires a rough-edged girl as her decoy, while she masquerades as the secretary. The Boy, believing the masquerade, acts smartly, and sets up a man to woo the (false) heiress. The girl in between gets an extra edge - she comes to know of the boy's identity - by his own mouth, he having been fallen in love with the 'secretary'. The girl too reciprocates, but refusing to admit to him, or even herself. And anyway she was deeply enmeshed into her own web of deceit - and only way for her was - whether to gain the financial advantage (or gracefully, and especially as she was in love) to forego it - but anyway her fate - as far as she was concerned was practically sealed, the moment the boy comes to know the deception. Naturally things have to sort out - and that would need a few more gold -diggers.

The movie has only gold-diggers - the two fathers, their children, the decoy, the man set up by the boy to romance decoy, and a few more (one of them would be spoiler). Thankfully Castro wasn't there yet - since one of the condition was that the marriage should take place in Havana - where they have drawn up their contract. Though funnily all the romance et al takes place at Miami - not really Cuba - though the nearest to it. Of course the ending complexity wasn't required, considering the step taken by the fathers. In fact they shouldn't have taken it, for the movie's sake - to keep the complexity alive).