O Carnaval da Vida

Lady from Louisiana was directed by Bernard Vorhaus who shot some nice B movies like Amazing Mr X, Bury me dead, and of course the fantastic thriller "the Last journey".

In Lady from Louisiana, we have the classic opposition of law against corruption, with a love story between the prosecutor (John Wayne) and the owner of vice establishments financed by her lottery (Ona Munsen) who ignores the rackets and killings Of Ray Middleton. Really classic story, but set in New Orleans and wonderfully shot by Vorhaus and cinematographer Jack Marta, the movie has some fine visual moments at night with travellings and strong editing, the best part being the hurricane with not enough budget for being spectacular. Forget the lousy comedy scenes.

Bernard Vorhaus wrote an interesting autobiography, Saved from oblivion.

Bound for New Orleans, young attorney John Reynolds falls in love with Julie, a high-spirited southern belle. But their Mardi Gras romance is ill-fated, for his mission is to end the town lottery, run by General Mirbeau, Julie's beloved father, and when he decides to see Reynold's way and when he learns of his employee's (Blackie) duplicitous dealing, he gets killed, shot by Blackie's right hand man.

The Lady from Louisiana sounds like a western, but it isn't - it's set in circa 1890's New Orleans, and the location, costumes and extravagant period detail is sharp as is the dialogue and the plot. Don't expect too much action, just a solid story with some melodrama. The subject matter about lottery is interesting and fairly relevant. John Wayne and Ona Munson have a good chemistry.

John Wayne battles the forces of corruption down New Orleans way in this passable time-killer.Henry Stephenson as the owner of a lottery game that's been robbing the town blind and Ray Middleton as his right hand man both put in decent performances.There's also a love story here but the sparks between Wayne and Ona Munson don't fly too far.The ending with biblical overtones that could have stood some better special effects,but all in all this film is fun to watch.

Although Lady from Louisiana isn't the greatest movie in the world, and it isn't even the greatest movie set in New Orleans, it's worth watching for Helen Westley. A veteran character actress, she got to enjoy a vast range throughout her career, but I'm willing to bet she never had more fun than in this period piece. Can you imagine her going undercover, bringing her knife to infiltrate the enemy, pretending to be a young Southern belle and flirting with a nightwatchman in order to steal a set of keys from his trouser pocket? I couldn't either, unless I'd seen this movie. I'm so happy for her that she got to enjoy such a fun role.

This mediocre flick is also worth watching if you want to see John Wayne without his horse. It's a period drama in which he plays a young, idealistic lawyer, determined to weed out the corruption in New Orleans. Good luck, Duke. Politics is a very tough racket to clean up, and when the citizens and powerful men are on the same side, he has an uphill battle. The problem is the lottery: the powerful men set up a "charitable" lottery for the common men, but whoever wins ends up being whisked away to the French Quarter and robbed - and sometimes killed. Can Duke get anyone to testify against the bad guys, or are they all too scared? Add in the terrible complication that Duke is in love with the head bad guy's daughter, Ona Munson, and you wonder how they will ever patch up their differences.

Or... if they even should. For me, I wasn't rooting for them to get back together. Oona was a pretty rotten person, and even though Duke had the cutest opening line to a movie I think I've ever seen (after breaking a lengthy kiss, he asks, "What's your name?"), I thought he could do better.

When this story begins, Julie (One Munson) and John Reynolds (John Wayne) meet and fall for each other when he arrives in New Orleans. Little do either realize that they are both destined to be on the opposite side. It seems that Julie's father, the General (Henry Stephenson), is head of the lottery and the new Anti-Lottery League has brought in John to clean up this racket.

While John thinks the General is his big problem, the General isn't that bad a guy. But neither realize just how low and dangerous the General's assistant, Blackie (Ray Middleton) is. When the General starts to suspect, the General is murdered...and Blackie encourages his lottery ticket salesmen to use ANY tactic to get tickets sold. It essentially becomes a shakedown racket...and folks pay protection by buying tickets...or else.

Can the nice guy John manage to clean up this den of thieves? And what about Julie? After all, she is foolish enough to blame John for the death of her father!

The style of this film is very similar to Wayne's other films in this time period. Since he's becoming more of a star, the budgets and look of the films have gotten much better than his cheap B- westerns of the 1930s. But despite looking much better and having a spectacular finale in this film, the Republic films are essentially B-movies with longer running times and bigger budgets. There were exceptions at this time (such as the films he did with John Ford, such as "Stagecoach") but this film fits in style-wise with Wayne's "Seven Sinners", "Dark Command" and "In Old California"...rather formulaic but enjoyable. My only quibble is that the baddie is named 'Blackie'...and yet no one seems to suspect him of villainy through most of the film!!