WEEK-END IN HAVANA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 188, 29 January 1943, Page 17

WEEK-END IN HAVANA

(20th Century-Fox)

"NA UCH better than their usual, didn’t you think?" "Well, yes. You saw more of her dancing." "And there was quite a nice story attached to

it, too." That was one of. the conversations I listened-in to as I walked away from the theatre after seeing Week-end in Havana, with Alice Faye doing the weekend on all her salesgirl savings plus the money paid out by the shipping company to stop her from talking about why the captain was not on the bridge when one of their luxury liners went aground. The dancing that more was seen of is done by Carmen Miranda, the unexploded Brazilian bombshell, who swings no mean hip through a series of songdances in which she wears head-gear and torso-gear of brightest reds, greens, yellows and whites in cunning combination, and in which she sings South American songs whose words are made up of bombardments of consonants and vowels going up in flames. And the nice story attached to it is about Cinderella

Alice Faye — even the Slippers come into it — and Prince Charming John Payne, the young vice-president of the shipping line, sent to keep a tag on Alice until he can persuade her to sign .a waiver absolving the company of all blame for the wreck. Alice, knowing her 10-cent pieces, says she will sign the waiver only when she has had her holiday that has been interrupted by the wreck; and it’s got to be a good holiday, too, and she’s got to have fun. Back in New York there’s a foot-stamping society bride (daughter of the shipping magnate) waiting for her Prince Charming; but. the. wedding has been postponed one week already, and this engagement in Havana is Important Business. Alice explains that she has saved up all her life so that she can go on a luxury cruise and have those lovely clothes.. She went without lunches to do so, she says; not, as a matter of fact, that the audience can notice this; although I’d say she has probably gone without a few morning teas since the first time I saw her, and I find the result fairly satisfactory. In fact, Alice in Technicolor, wearing blue and singing a song in a hay-waggon, makes a colour scheme that is not hard to look at. Cesar Romero’s antics as a gambling playboy leave me as unmoved as his antics as any other kind of playboy have nearly. always left me. But I have to sit up and take a good look at Carmen Miranda’s dancing and let my astonished ears hear as much as may be of her extraordinarily agile utterance. She keeps her face muscles as dancing-fit as her leg muscles.