Cinderella Jones Reviews

Originally intended as a small-scale 1944 wartime musical, the release of CINDERELLA JONES was held up for two years so the studio could launch a new male star, Alda, in the more ambitious film RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945). Unfortunately, neither the film nor Alda became a hit and by delaying the release of CINDERELLA JONES, many of its wartime references had to be edited out at the expense of the plot. The story revolves around a young woman, Leslie, who stands to inherit $10 million if she can marry a man with unusual intelligence. She figures that an exclusive male technology institute is the proper place to find such a genius, and she attempts to enroll in the school. What she doesn't realize, until the end of the film, is that her boy friend, bandleader Alda, is quite the whiz kid in his own right. This film was made during a very unhappy period in the personal life of director Berkeley (he had again taken to the bottle over a severed marriage and the death of his mother, a guiding light in his career) and as a result none of the pizzazz usually associated with his name is present. Songs: "When the One You Love Simply Won't Love Back," "If You're Waitin' I'm Waitin' Too," "Cinderella Jones," and "You Never Know Where You're Goin' Till You Get There," (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne).