This Columbia Technicolor musical made in 1945, the last year of WWII, is one of those tossed together, anything goes product that a wartime audience desperate for entertainment accepted. It feels at times as if Columbia filmed all the musical numbers first and then had a contest at the studio to see who could come up with a plot. Any plot. The score is undistinguished, although there's lots of it. Pluses: Jack Cole exuberant choreography, helped by the very talented Marc Platt who could both dance and act, but nobody seems to have figured out how to use him properly. Neither a romantic lead or comic relief, he's wasted here. Rita, of course, does not disappoint her fans She is her usual gorgeous self, a marvelous dancer doing her best to act the predictable boy meets girl love story that comes in and out the film between numbers, almost as an afterthought. Lee Bowman is attractive as her love interest, so is Janet Blair as the co-star in a thankless role. TRIVIA: Shelly Winters, at the beginning of her career, can be spotted here and there as one of the chorus girls, but (unless I'm mistaken) she has no dialogue. This is a mess of a film, but who can resist watching Rita? She lights up the screen.
Review of Tonight and Every Night
