DOWN TO EARTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 445, 2 January 1948, Page 14

DOWN TO EARTH

(Columbia) HIS is a show, says Larry Parks at "a critical moment in it, for people who like jive and hot dogs and baseball. And coming from one who cannot be expected to take a wholly objective view that is a surprisingly honest assessment of the film’s quality. If anything, it errs on the conservative side. Down to Earth will, I am sure, appeal to a number of people who have not yet had the chance to develop these outward and visible stigmata of the American way of life. It will appeal to those who like musical shows (I use the adjective in the technical sense) concelyed in the grand manner, but born only after every imaginable complication; it will please those who measure their uplift in terms of the elevations of the chorus; and it may even delight those who enjoy that peculiar brand of pixilated whimsy which is the New Mythology. As the film opens, Terpsichore, who has been leaning out from the gold bar of heaven after the fashion of Mr. Rossetti’s damozel, is scandalised to discover that Mr. Parks is rehearsing a Broadway show called' Swinging the Muses. She vows that she will go slumming and teach Mr. Parks a lesson, but getting out of heaven is as difficult as getting out of any place these days, what with declarations, exit permits, priorities, and so forth. However, she manages it, and the deus ex machina who resolves all the difficulties (the deus ex flying machina, to be more specific) is none other than our old friend Mr. Jordan. LA little changed in feature, to be sure,

but then it’s a few years; since we saw him last, ang fortunately there’s that other celestial Thomas Cook’s man, E. Everett Horton, to help in the identification. From there on the story marches forward and backward with all the resolution of the Grand Old Duke of York. Terps takes over the show and nearly wrecks it by removing the jive. Mr, Parks reasserts himself, the jive is reinjected and the show is a smash-hit. Then just as Mr. Parks and his divine leading lady are about to fall into one another’s arms, in comes Mr, Jordan and calls her home. She pleads with him -blood is thicker than ichor-but to no purpose. However, by taking a leaf out of one of Mr. Dunne’s books, the ree sourceful Mr. Jordan manages to contrive a happy ending. Rita Hayworth (who seems to have fleshed up a bit) won't be everyone’s idea of Terpsichore, and a balletomane might find her a trifle heavy-footed at times. On the whole, Down to Earth scarcely justifies the dollars obviously spent on it, but both James Glesson and Edward Everett Horton work hard and raise laughs, and there are one or two songs which I fear will be tiresomely familiar before they are forgotten,