Bungalow pour femmes

Rather like her one-time co-star Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, it seemed to me, was often put to work in racy movies requiring her to be sexy and regularly disrobe. So it is here in Raoul Walsh's lurid melodrama set in Honolulu right at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack by the Japanese.

How her title character got there is via San Francisco where her thinly-disguised call-girl activities attract a police ban and set her on a boat trip to Hawaii, on board which she encounters fellow-passenger Richard Egan, a successful writer. They have a fling and Egan's Jim Blair lends her some money until she gets started. Soon afterwards he learns she's effectively a prostitute and she that he's engaged raptor another woman,

As their relationship ebbs and flows, the bombing takes place unsurprisingly causing a major panic and the film ends up with one of those cop-out endings which looks suspiciously like it was dreamed up in response to exit-cards handed out to preview audiences.

Russell has to pretty much carry the whole film by herself and is rarely off screen. Indeed director Walsh sets the up the whole movie in the first shot when he sets her up walking away from the camera before abruptly turning around and facing down the viewer. She gets strong support from a blonde Agnes Moorhead as the brothel's tough-minded madam and Michael Pate as Moorhead's sadistic enforcer, just as happy bullying women as knocking out non-paying clients. I also thought that Egan did well in a tricky part as the principled writer-turned-soldier torn between his attraction for his clean-living society girl-friend and Russell's more carnal charms.

For me the story took a lot of believing and I had an especially hard time accepting the depicted durability of Russell and Egan's affair, but filmed in rich Deluxe colour and making good use of location shooting, this almost proto-feminist movie on adult subject matter, for all its compromises within its storyline and characters, was another of those contemporary Hollywood films pushing the envelope right under the censor's nose.

Raoul Walsh directs Jane Russell in an adaptation of William Bradford Huie's sexy novel about a brunette bombshell of ill-repute who leaves San Francisco for Honolulu in 1941 and falls into successful career as a dance-hall hostess. The heroine, mercenary and not above some cunning ruthlessness, is an interesting creation, and Russell does her justice. While her wisecracks and general air of condescension are unlikely ingredients for a woman who makes her fortune as a quasi-prostitute, Russell has the hard, salty armor for a role like this. Playing star-crossed lovers with wealthy novelist Richard Egan, Jane is nearly all business, and her witticisms are a hoot. Unfortunately, 1956 was too early for Hollywood to begin revealing the layers of the wanton female mind, and the picture seems too timid, too clean and luxurious as a result. Strictly as a big studio soaper, it has its pleasures. **1/2 from ****

The fifties provided its share of World War II films... The super classics being David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity." Although Raoul Walsh's "The Revolt of Mamie Stover," a closely related minor film, also bears some consideration...

The story, set in 1941, has Jane being escorted by the San Francisco Police to the entrance galley of a ship leaving town... She is advised not to return--ever!

Aboard the Hawaii-bound vessel, she meets science fiction novelist Richard Egan who proves to be the first man in her versatile lifetime who respects her as a person... Naturally she is, at the proper time, impressed...

Once they dock, she lands a job at the Bungalow Club, presided over by a domineering madam Agnes Moorehead...

According to the movie, servicemen were lining up just for the opportunity to dance and talk (but definitely nothing more) with Moorehead's "hostesses," specially the ever popular Jane who makes a memorable impression as a cynical sleazy dance-hall hostess...

Jane is seen avoided by the better element in town, who do not appreciate her patriotic contribution... Her conscience forces her to tell Egan: "No, Jimmy, I can't let you ruin your life... You can't lick the whole island-I've got a number on my back and they all know it."

Egan was positive that some compromise can be worked out, but in the meantime he goes off to war... The aerial Pearl Harbor Attack, on December 7, 1941, by the Japanese is also seen...

While he is away Jane is determined to make all the social abuse worth enduring and becomes the queen of the town's nightlife... Jane sees this as her only way to acquire wealth...

When Egan returns on leave to Honolulu, he was filled with consternation to discover that Jane is the star attraction of the Bungalow Club... The shock of it all pushes him back into the refined arms of his society fiancée, Joan Leslie, who has that nice home high on the hill... And Jane? Well, definitely you have to see the picture to know what she does...

Jane Russell wears a bright-red dress as the self-satisfied, eye-catching woman of "The Revolt of Mamie Stover," but she is definitely no screen substitute of Sadie Thompson as had been intended...

In the middle of the ludicrous plot Jane sang "Keep Your Eyes on the Hands" and "If You Wanna See Mamie Tonight." The latter tune apt to call up memories of Rita Hayworth's "Put the Blame on Mame" from Charles Vidor's "Gilda."

The CinemaScope format provides a clever framework for Jane Russell's spectacular physique...

Good Hawaiian locations, a strong performance by the gorgeous Jane Russell and a very sexy Agnes Moorehead - how could you want more? But there is also glorious colour and cinemascope, a pretty good recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbour, and Michael Pate as the baddie.

Sadly Richard Egan is dull as Russell's love interest and the whole film is ruined by a rushed and meaningless ending. I guess no-one really believed the film's feminist ideas.

If The Revolt Of Mamie Stover had been done at Columbia Pictures Harry Cohn would have made this the big budget film of the year and had Rita Hayworth doing it. As it was 20th Century Fox had Susan Hayward under contract and I'll bet this was offered to her first.

With her tresses a flaming Arlene Dahl red, Jane Russell plays the title role in this film. She's a working girl who's been kicked out of San Francisco for her notoriety. But Jane's heard of job opportunities in Honolulu working in another den of iniquity run by Agnes Moorehead with Michael Pate as her enforcer. She also meets on the tramp freighter she's traveling on Richard Egan with whom it's on and off for the next few years from before World War II and after.

Jane's smart about money though and she saved her's and invested it in picking up cheap real estate from people leaving Hawaii after Pearl Harbor. She's rich post war, but hardly respectable.

It's what she craves most, respectability as she tells Egan about her white trash background from Mississippi. Funny that Russell doesn't have the slightest trace of southern accent or even attempts one.

Russell is good in the title role, but the plot really doesn't go anywhere. I can't begin to fathom what Richard Egan's character is all about the script is unintelligible where he's concerned. And the story has a sudden death ending that leaves you hanging.

Not her best film, but it does have some nice Hawaiian numbers one of which Bing Crosby recorded for a Hawaiian album he did, Keep Your Eyes On The Hands.