Dixiana Reviews

A large waste of talent, time, and money was this box-office bomb about the South. Set in New Orleans at Mardi Gras time, the film uses color in the Fat Tuesday sequence and it helps buck up the proceedings, but not much. Bebe Daniels is a circus performer in 1840s Louisiana. She goes ga-ga for Marshall, a wealthy southerner, but his mother, Jobyna Howland, is not amused and does not approve her prospective daughter-in-law's breeding. She uses her power to keep the couple apart. Also serving to muddle matters is Harolde, playing an oily gambler. He wants Daniels for his own and will stop at nothing to keep her and Marshall apart. Daniels eventually shows up Harolde as a fool and convinces one and all that she is fit to be Marshall's wife. Wheeler and Woolsey provide the only humor in the witless screenplay, and they stoop to some gags that were old when Andrew Jackson was a boy. Bill Robinson does a dance but it's not enough to save this tub from sinking. Marshall was a very fine Metropolitan Opera singer, and he may have looked good from the balcony in that venerable building on Broadway and 40th, but, when examined by the unflinching eye of the camera, he fell far short and his career was soon over. There was not one song you could hum in the score. Songs include: "Dixiana" (Benny Davis, Harry Tierney), "Here's To The Old Days," "A Tear, a Kiss, a Smile," "My One Ambition Is You," "A Lady Loved a Soldier," "Mr. and Mrs. Sippi," and "Guiding Star" (Anne Caldwell, Tierney).