When My Baby Smiles at Me Reviews

The third screen adaptation of George Manker Watters and Arthur Hopkins' "Burlesque" casts Betty Grable and Dan Dailey as married vaudevillians Bonny and Skid. Under the management of Lefty (James Gleason) their star rises, with Skid (a comic) becoming a hit on Broadway. He's unable to handle his success, however, and starts hitting the bottle hard, breaking up the marriage and landing him in Bellevue. After divorcing the aptly named Skid, Bonny is wooed by a wealthy rancher (Richard Arlen); meanwhile, Skid's friends Bozo and Gussie (Jack Oakie and June Havoc) help him to get back on his feet and the stage, so much so that he eventually reteams with Bonny--romantically and professionally. There's lots of music to complement the simple mix of pathos and comedy, including two new tunes by Joseph Myrow and Mack Gordon and many standards. Burlesque is shown to be an honorable way to earn a living and a family entertainment at that; snappy direction by Walter Lang and good dance routines by Seymour Felix also contribute to make this a pleasant 98 minutes. Joseph Myrow and Mack Gordon wrote the only new tunes for the picture, "What Did I Do?" and "By the Way" (sung by Grable). Other tunes were standards that included "Say Si Si" (Al Stillman, Ernesto Lecuona), "When My Baby Smiles at Me" (Ted Lewis, Bill Munro, Andrew B. Sterling, sung by Dailey), "Oui, Oui, Marie" (Fred Fisher, Joseph McCarthy, Alfred Bryan), "Don't Bring Lulu" (Billy Rose, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson), "Shoe Shine Blues" (Brown, Henderson, Buddy De Sylva), and "The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady" (Walter Donaldson, M.C. Brice).