Brasa Viva

Red, Hot And Blue which was also the title of one of Cole Porter's more successful shows from the Thirties has absolutely nothing to do with this film starring Betty Hutton and Victor Mature. If Paramount did anything they bought the title and nothing else.

Hutton plays one of three roommates and members of a little theater stock company in which Victor Mature is the director. They're doing some serious things at his company like Hamlet. But Paramount asking us to envision Betty Hutton in Hamlet is really a bit much. A serious version of Hamlet that is. Betty does contribute a rollicking swing version of the Hamlet story in her own raucous style.

Betty's got a publicity agent in William Demarest who is busy trying to get her in the media with a variety of loony stunts. The last one was more than she bargained for when he set her up with William Talman who is going into the producing business, but in fact is a gangster. When she's the only witness to his sudden demise, she get kidnapped herself by one of the gangster factions looking for answers to Talman's murder.

Although Betty's fans will love Red, Hot and Blue the film really gets more silly than funny. Mature looks really uncomfortable doing some of the physical comedy that's called for in the end. I've a feeling that Bob Hope or Eddie Bracken might have been what was originally in mind for her leading man.

Frank Loesser wrote the score for Betty and he gave her one of her best musical numbers a few years earlier in The Perils Of Pauline with I Wish I Didn't Love You So. He didn't write anything remotely as good for her in Red, Hot and Blue, but the songs do fit her personality. Loesser also appears as one of the hoodlums.

June Havoc is one of Betty's roommates doing an Eve Arden part probably because Eve Arden was busy elsewhere. Art Smith plays a Walter Winchell like columnist and Raymond Walburn a lecherous old coot out for a little back seat fun with Betty or whomever. All three are memorable.

It's not hardly one of Hutton's best films, but it will satisfy her fans.

Despite having a good cast and a good script, this film is not that good at all. Betty Hutton is an aspiring actress who is absolutely bonkers in more or less every film she's in. It would be good to see her in a serious role rather than comedy roles where she is over the top. Victor Mature wants to be a Broadway director and is a bit more believable. This is probably down to the writing rather than his performance. He has some good lines, but it's just that other characters around him are not so well drawn or believable. Hutton is quite spirited, and you well believe that she can hold her own in a fight with a man or woman, maybe even two men. It would take a big woman to get the better of Hutton. Overall, it is disposable fun.

I never have understood lists of best and worst actors. First, they too often focus only on recent actors and actresses. Second, I've never seen a worst of list featuring Betty Hutton..and she has to be among the least talented and unlikable leading ladies of all time. Here in "Red, Hot and Blue", she is at her worst--loud, obnoxious and about as believable as a $7 bill. It's a shame, as the plot idea isn't bad...but Hutton practically screams her lines and is about as subtle as a stripper at a Baptist barbecue. Overall, a film I had to struggle to finish because I simply hated the leading lady and her acting. I've seen Hutton in a few films which were good, but too often her persona was just loud, loud, loud...and I cannot recommend the film no matter how VIctor Mature and the rest try to save the story.

If you don't want to kill the late Betty Hutton (at her over-the-top over-energetic worst here) six minutes into the film, you'll probably have a good time with this Frank Loesser vehicle that disappointingly has no relationship at all to the better known and more tuneful Cole Porter stage show with Ethel Merman. There's nothing here to erase memories of Hutton's hit song "Murder He Says" from her best film, 1943's HAPPY GO LUCKY with Mary Martin.

GUYS AND DOLLS it isn't, but it is fun to see Loesser himself (who wrote the semi-score for Hutton to chew scenery through) turn in a credible acting job as a mobster who just might bump off the always irritating Hutton before her screen roommates quite reasonably get the idea. June Havoc (Gypsy Rose Lee's real life sister) is a bit long in the tooth but excellent as the chief imposed-upon roommate, as is an almost young William Frawley as Hutton's eager agent (years before he became "Uncle Charley" on TV's MY THREE SONS) and co-top billed Victor Mature as the director in the central backstage story who is also a rooming house neighbor and inexplicable boyfriend.

There are only so many twists on the familiar backstage film plot, and this RED, HOT AND BLUE bowwows most of the best from more famous films like 42ND STREET, but John Farrow and Charles Lederer's screenplay makes them almost feel fresh as it bounces pin-ball fashion from point to point.

Look for William Talman (later prosecutor Hamilton Burger on TV's PERRY MASON) and Broadway's Jack Kruschen in a couple of effective small roles.

For me, though, the high point of the film was when Percy Helton's stage manager (looking remarkably like the stage's Harold J. Kennedy) gives a perfect assessment of the star's talent following a number imposed upon him outside the stage door. THAT'S entertainment.

There's not much to this film other than star Betty Hutton herself. The production values are minimal, the storyline (about a small theatre company trying to hit the big time) is simultaneously convoluted and unengaging. And your guess is as good as mine as to what the title has to do with anything (taken from a relatively successful Cole Porter stage production, there is *nothing* here by Cole Porter).

But, if you like Betty Hutton, you'll probably enjoy the film. It isn't as key a film in her career as "Annie Get Your Gun," "The Perils of Pauline," or "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," but it certainly gives her plenty of room to showcase her manic comic ability and her own (shall we say) unique way of putting over a number. You just haven't experienced Betty Hutton until you've seen her perform a four-minute musical encapsulation of "Hamlet." Fasten your seat belts and hold onto the arm rests, because she is dialed up to eleven throughout the piece. Everytime you think she can't get anymore over the top, she manages to push even farther! This number alone makes the entire film worthy of some interest.