Let's Make Up (1954) User Reviews

Early Video "Bargains" and a Great Film Star in Free Fall

[theowinthrop · 5/10 · 3 May 2009]

I am only giving this film a "5" because it is rare to see Errol Flynn doing song and dance routines, though his best one (in THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS) is the one you try to catch.

We are now in the second (possibly third) generation of home-entertainment systems wherein we can watch a movie or old television show on video or DVD or the newer form of DVD and enjoy it over and over (until it has to be replaced). Some film videos and DVDs do not have to - because one viewing is sufficient to tell us how mediocre or bad the film is. LILACS IN THE SPRING (I am sorry to say) is in that category. I will go into that in a moment, but first one word I found about false marketing.

Many films that were put out on Video in the 1980s were "in the public domain". That is the films were no longer protected by any copy-write problems with producers or companies. A few were actually good films (like HIS GAL Friday), but many were really poor ones. LILACS IN THE SPRING was one of the middle group - not fully bad but not so good either. It's two leads were past their prime, and one had to play a double role she was ill-equipped for. The one musical number was spirited but not memorable (and given the female lead's reputation for singing and dancing that was unfortunate). It brought back reminders of the lady's past triumphs in two older films. It even hinted at past triumphs of the male lead in one sequence. But the story while serviceable was not great. Also the fact that the female lead is virtually forgotten in the United States, the manufacturers and marketers of the video decided on a fortuitous coincidence to get potential buyers.

LILACS IN THE SPRING was made by Henry Wilcox in England in 1954 for his wife, the then celebrated English star Anna Neagle (who appeared in several film biographies as Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria, and Nell Gwynn, among others). He managed to get Errol Flynn, once one of the biggest names in Hollywood (and a still recognizable one in the 1950s or even now) for a two picture deal opposite Anne (the other film is KING'S RHAPSODY, which I never have seen). The third star in it was David Farrar, also a once promising leading man in British films (BLACK NARCISSUS) but now on a decline like Flynn. As Farrar's rival for Neagle (as her own daughter) was a British actor named Peter Graves. Graves name was prominently displayed on the box for the video under Flynn's - and many Americans thought it was the Peter Graves from television's hit "Mission Impossible" (as well as the weird pilot in the AIRPLANE comedy series). I did not buy LILACS for that reason (I was curious about the film because I never saw it) but I keep wondering how many bought the movie because of Graves' name on the box.

Errol Flynn's wonderful career as king of the adventure films on the Warner Brothers' lots was over by 1954. His last two really good films were literary: KIM and THE MASTER OF BALLENTRAE. Most of the films he did after 1954 were at best mediocre and at worst drivel. He faced a problem that faced Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor as well: age. Power had been lucky to have Darryl Zanuck in his corner, and was slowly able to show his real talent for straight acting in his final 20th Century Fox movies, and then resumed stage work. The result was a stunning series of fine performances in films like ABANDON SHIP! before his untimely death in 1958. Similarly Taylor was a good company player at MGM, and got some damn good roles, like his cynical lawyer in PARTY GIRL. But Flynn flubbed it badly. He tried to produce a film on William Tell and it financially ruined him. He tried to appear as Edward Rochester in JANE EYRE on stage (produced by Huntington Hartford) and the production failed. So he was reduced to the likes of THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN FABIAN (which he wrote the screenplay for) and MARU MARU.

Of his later films only this one, THE SUN ALSO RISES, TOO MUCH TOO SOON, and THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, are worth looking at. He performs well in them, but he is in support in the last three (in THE SUN he's supporting Powell!). Here he is the husband of Neagle, and the match is a love match that is ruined by career conflicts and jealousy. Neagle divorces him, and keeps their daughter. He still loves her, and is planning to return to her when word comes that she has died in an accident. Years later he is approached to resume relations with his daughter (which vaguely sounds like his better "Jack Barrymore" performance in TOO MUCH TOO SOON).

Neagle has the thankless job of playing mother and daughter, and she simply is too old to do it convincingly (Jessie Matthews did do it very nicely in EVERGREEN, but she was a young woman at that time). Flynn looks convincing as the father (he's old enough), and he can be Neagle's husband earlier, but they are supposed to be about thirty, and they both look closer to fifty (which age is roughly the correct one for both). Flynn's dissipations did not help his looks. As Neagle has two flashbacks resuming roles as Victoria and Gwynn, Flynn is shown in a setting for a film that looks like THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

Apparently the film did well in England, if not here. If you want to see Neagle in a good film check out the films she did in the 1940s, at her peak (like her quartet of performances in the "over the years" saga, ELIZABETH OF LADYMEAD). Ditto for Flynn fans on his films.

The Bloom Is Off These Lilacs

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 2 May 2009]

When the producing/acting team of Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle got Errol Flynn he was willing to work for just about anything in Lilacs In The Spring. He owed the US government a lot of back taxes and was abroad so he couldn't be arrested for same and his epic William Tell had gone belly up. So the Wilcoxes were able to get Flynn for a fraction of his asking price from a decade ago for this Neagle film.

In it Anna Neagle plays a musical comedy star and her own daughter, in addition to reprising two of her previous screen roles in dream sequences, Queen Victoria and Nell Gwynn. The frequent use of flashbacks and imaginary sequences is going to leave the viewer quite a bit confused.

As for Errol Flynn he's both husband and father to Anna Neagle in her two different guises. The young Anna Neagle is caught between two suitors, producer David Farrar and stagedoor johnny Peter Graves. That is not the Peter Graves of Mission Impossible.

Neagle sings beautifully of course, she was one of the United Kingdom's premier musical comedy stars as well as a film star. As for Flynn he does a nice song and dance to Lily Of Laguna, but compare it to the number he did in Thank Your Lucky Stars with Warner Brothers during World War II, That's What You Jolly Well Get. Errol's aged quite considerably and it shows.

I wish both of these stars had teamed years earlier because they're a bit long in the tooth for this material, especially Flynn.

A confused hodge podge of a film...

[AlsExGal · 4/10 · 12 September 2021]

... part musical, part old fashioned nostalgic drama, and Flynn is barely in the first half of the production. You keep waiting for him to appear. But the film improves noticeably in its second half when Errol is in it. The story takes on aspects (never fully explored, unfortunately) of A Star Is Born, with Flynn as a faded stage star whose wife's show business career is on the rise. It allows Errol to show some vulnerability.

His finest moment of acting in the film is set on a Hollywood sound stage. Flynn's character by this time has had a comeback as a costume action film star (obviously based on the actor himself) and he is dressed up in uniform for what appears to be a Charge of the Light Brigade-type adventure.

By this time his character is divorced from Anna Neagle but it's apparent that he still carries a torch for her. He receives word on the sound stage just as they are about to shoot a scene that Neagle will be re-marrying. Flynn tries to act breezy and stoic as an aggressive reporter peppers him with questions about the upcoming wedding but you can see that he is bothered by the questions. He gives the reporter a boot in the rear (pure real life Flynn) and when the reporter tries to punch him in response an angry Flynn knocks him down.

Then he has to shoot the scene for the film he is making. It is here that Flynn has an unexpectedly touching moment as an actor. He's having a dialogue exchange with another actor and there is a closeup of Flynn's face. His mind starts to wander back to his wife and the good times they had once had as he says a few words related to her not in the script. In this closeup Flynn's eyes show the faintest signs of starting to water and his chin begins to slightly quiver.

The director yells "Cut!" and Flynn snaps back into reality once again. But in that brief four or five second closeup there genuinely appears to be pain in his eyes. It's a beautifully understated moment, and, brief as it is, reflects the often unrealized potential Errol had as an actor. I only wish Lilacs in the Spring had allowed him more opportunities this good but, at least, it does have this one touching moment.

Aging Flynn in Sentimental Musical Drama...

[cariart · 28 October 2003]

After production of Errol Flynn's financial debacle, WILLIAM TELL, was halted, the actor discovered that he not only had lost the money he'd invested in the project, but that his long-time business manager had been swindling him for years, as well. Fighting bankruptcy, the aging one-time 'King' of Hollywood swashbucklers found himself desperately in need of work, to stave off an army of creditors. Fortunately, legendary British producer/director Herbert Wilcox liked the high-living star, and, realizing that Flynn's name still had marquee value in England, cast him opposite his wife, popular British actress Anna Neagle, in the filming of her recent stage success, 'The Glorious Days', retitled LILACS IN THE SPRING.

A sentimental tale told largely in flashback, Neagle portrays an English stage star who is injured in a WWII air raid. Flying from Hollywood, her long-estranged father, film star John Beaumont (Flynn, with silver hair) must deal with an army of the press, and her would-be beau, British army officer Charles King (David Farrar). Meanwhile, Neagle, unconscious, hallucinates herself as being legendary star Nell Gywn, and Queen Victoria. Upon seeing her father, she relives her mother's early life, when she was 'discovered' by Beaumont in his days as a vaudevillian song-and-dance man (Flynn gets a chance to do a bit of soft shoe, singing 'Lily of Laguna', and making up for his limited musical ability with abundant charm). As her star ascends, his declines, and after leaving the stage to fight in WWI, he returns to find himself a forgotten man. Hollywood beckons, however, and he sees an opportunity to strike it rich as an actor in motion pictures. She refuses to leave England, and the couple separate. Achieving stardom in America, Beaumont is far too involved in his career to get to know his daughter...until her injury reminds him of how much he loved her mother, and needed to know her.

Maudlin, yes, but British audiences loved this kind of tearjerker, which offered several well-choreographed production numbers with Neagle...and, if you look carefully among the silhouetted male dancers during a tango, you'll find 24-year old Sean Connery, unbilled, and fresh from the chorus of a London stage revival of 'South Pacific'.

While the film bombed in the U.S. (under the title LET'S MAKE UP), it was popular enough in the U.K. to keep Errol Flynn working, and his creditors at bay for a little longer. Next on his agenda would be his very last swashbuckler, THE DARK AVENGER...

A confusing film that felt like bits and pieces of other films.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 2 January 2021]

"Lilacs in the Spring" is a very confusing and, in my opinion, ill-conceived film. There's plenty of stuff to like in the movie (such as seeing Errol Flynn dance for, I think, the second time in a movie)....but the sum total just didn't work for me.

The film begins during the later portion of the Blitz in London...1944. The story follows Carole Beaumont (Anna Naegel) through a story and multiple flashback scenes. After getting bumped around by a bomb explosion, Carole believes she's back in the time of Charles II of Britain. The man playing Charles in this flashback is her boyfriend, Charles. Later, she has another flashback during which she's Queen Victoria hanging out with her husband, Albert....who is played by another one of Carole's boyfriends. Later, there is a LONG flashback, though from whose viewpoint, I have no idea! You see Carole's parents dating (played by Flynn and Naegle) which is confusing, as Flynn plays both father AND lover to two different characters played by Naegle (the mother and then daughter)! It's a bit creepy...and confusing...and it doesn't fit in at all with the previous two flashbacks. In fact, this flashback really is like a whole separate movie!

The bottom line is that the script just seemed like a mess. The singing, dancing and story (at times) were nice but the whole package was just strange and confusing...like it needed a revision to the script. It also would have helped to have two different actresses play Carole and her mother. A misfire.

Flynn takes command

[david-frieze · 5/10 · 1 December 2012]

"Lilacs in the Spring" (or "Let's Make Up" as it was released in the USA) is a very strange film. I should admit that I saw this in a truly awful print, with terrible color and some chunks, small or otherwise, apparently missing, so the film may actually be marginally less strange than I think. Still, it's very badly constructed. The first half hour or so, some of it in black-and-white, offers us Anna Neagle as a young woman during World War II trying to decide between two suitors. I suspect Anna Neagle is an acquired taste, especially for an American like myself, and I haven't acquired it. Her acting is acceptable, her dancing is fine, her singing is well-trained, but she isn't particularly appealing. There's something brittle and artificial about her that obviously excited British audiences during and just after the war (she was an enormous star in her native country, thanks at least in part to the exertions of her husband, directed Herbert Wilcox).

It doesn't help that her two suitors are no more appealing than she is. Peter Graves (not the American actor) makes literally no impression as a shy, mild-mannered soldier with a German accent (his character's father is supposed to have been German), and is only marginally more interesting as Prince Albert (Neagle's character has a dream sequence in which she's Queen Victoria). David Farrar is, if anything, even less attractive as an overbearing stage director.

This tedious story line is then pushed aside for another flashback which takes up the bulk of the film, and it's here that "Lilacs in the Spring" becomes watchable, because it's here that Errol Flynn takes over. He was in his mid-forties by now (and looking at least ten years older), but he's the only one in the film with star quality, and he has it in spades. He's also an extremely convincing actor in this role - a self-confident song-and-dance man who woos and weds Anna Neagle's character's mother (also played by Anna Neagle) and propels her to stardom, while his own career heads downhill. As a showcase for Anna Neagle, the introduction of Flynn is something of a tactical error - he has extraordinary charm and energy and he makes every other actor in the vicinity look unnecessary, with the exception of Kathleen Harrison, who's always fun to watch.

And that's the problem - unlike Flynn, and despite all the lavish musical numbers designed to show off her talents, Neagle isn't particularly interesting to watch on screen. The flashback story engulfs the rest of the film to the point where we just couldn't care less - if we had cared at all - whom the "younger" Neagle character decides to marry.

It's worth watching to see Errol Flynn at his best - not as a swashbuckler, but as a performer.

Silly froth of interest to Flynn fans only.

[Steve-171 · 4/10 · 11 March 1999]

Late Flynn, when he took almost any work he could get to pay off alimony. He turns in a sincere, believable performance, occasionally lampooning himself, and does a creditable song and dance number. Other points of interest include Peter Graves as Prince Albert (if you didn't know, you'd never guess) and Sean Connery is supposedly in there somewhere as an extra, but I haven't found him.

Beau steals the show

[Igenlode Wordsmith · 7/10 · 9 October 2004]

(Minor spoilers for second half)

This film was an unexpected pleasure! I went to see it because it was billed as effectively a 'Greatest Hits' compilation from Anna Neagle, allowing me to sample some of her famous roles without first needing to sit through all the relevant films. But "Lilacs in the Spring" not only proves to be a charming historical cavalcade - it also manages what, for my money, neither "Irene" nor "The Three Maxims" had been able to achieve. In additional to demonstrating Anna's technical facility, it reaches true emotional depth in the second half and finally brought me to care about the characters.

Anna supplies a variety of distinctive accents and characterisations to her multiple heroines: spry Nell Gwyn, demure Victoria, down-to-earth Carole in wartime, and, in her most sophisticated part, the ingenue Lillian Grey who becomes a brittle showbusiness celebrity. Jennifer Mitchell provides a masterly echo of Carole's adolescent self, in a performance that had me convinced at the time I was watching Anna Neagle herself in yet another quick-change role.... But it is Errol Flynn, of all people - well past the zenith of his career and his looks - who is a revelation in this film as beefy music-hall star 'Beau' Beaumont.

For the man can act. One forgets it, beneath the charm and the heroics and the famous sidelong grin. Watching him as Beau, florid actor eclipsed by his rising young wife, it dawned on me I was witnessing something it never occurred to me to imagine - Errol Flynn playing Norman Maine. (Why, oh why, didn't he..?)

Frankly, the thickened body and lined face don't matter. It's not the character he once used to play, but someone entirely different - but the charisma is as high-octane as ever, and it's easy to see how he sweeps his young co-star off her feet. He duly sings and dances, as advertised, and turns in a creditable performance in each - though fortunately the action of the film doesn't require him to be claimed to excel - but it is in the acting stakes that he more than earns his headline billing for what is, on the face of it, a relatively minor part in Anna Neagle's showcase plot.

Back in his 'Robin Hood' days, I was surprised to find myself admiring his expressive features as much as his athletic form. Twenty years later, Flynn can still play the subtleties of a scene with his face alone, shading from merriment to tenderness through hurt to dawning anger. As Beau films yet another mindless action movie in Hollywood (in one of several cheeky in-joke references) we see the bored actor, trotting out his lines, betrayed suddenly into a moment of real feeling from the man beneath, in a performance that has nothing to do with swashbuckling and everything to do with Flynn.

Anna Neagle too is at her most expressive in the sequences between Lillian Grey and her feckless husband - there is a telling little instant when it is made clear that, for all his 'torch-bearing', it is Beau who wanted the divorce in order to marry a Hollywood starlet - and it is with a real wrench that we are swept back into the wartime present without seeing her again. But while Anna's earlier fantasy sequences are charming, it is only with the Lillian and Beau story that the film starts to come to life; and that, I suspect, is entirely down to Errol Flynn. He has a compelling presence that lovely, accomplished Anna simply hasn't got... which I can only assume to be that elusive star quality.

The film verges at times upon schmaltz, as in its opening titles or Chelsea Pensioners scenes, but generally never quite slips. By the end, despite a colour-decayed print (so much for 'Trucolor') and occasional soundtrack damage, it had me smiling without restraint. This is undoubtedly the Anna Neagle picture I've enjoyed the most so far... but ironically, I was left hankering after the ghost of the 'A Star is Born' that could have been!

A much-needed paycheck for a forgettable film

[schappe1 · 5/10 · 15 September 2021]

British producer Herbert Wilcox came to Flynn's financial rescue, signing him to a two-picture deal. Both films were vehicles for his wife Dame Anna Neagle, a popular actress, singer and dancer since the mid-1930's whose own career was on the wane as she entered her 50's. She was still youthful-looking and in this film, covering the era from one world war to the other, plays both Flynn's wife and her daughter, (she was 5 years older than Flynn, who of course looks older than his actual years).

The story more unravels than unfolds. He's a music hall star before the first war, discovers her and makes her a star, then goes off to war and finds he can't get his career going again afterwards while she's become a bigger star than he ever was. He can't handle the situation and goes off to Hollywood, where he becomes a big star in the new medium. But he misses her and the re-unite. She agrees to fly out to Hollywood when her run in her current play is over but dies in a plane crash. Some years later, the daughter is trying to decide which of two men to marry and Daddy helps her to decide and puts her on a plane with the right guy. Along the way, the daughter dreams of being two famous historical characters Neagle had played back in the 30's, Nell Gwynn and Queen Victoria, in basically irrelevant sequences. I guess it's her husband's tribute to her career, which was winding down.

'Lilacs in the Spring' is the British title, a reference to a picnic the elder Neagle character had with Flynn's character before he goes off to war. 'Let's Make Up' is vague American title, where the film bombed. I see another reviewer has suggested that based, on the character we see him playing here, Flynn might have made a good Norman Maine in "A Star is Born", (which was done at Flynn's old studio). The thought occurred dot me, too. He would certain have understood that character. James Mason makes Maine more pathetic than sympathetic. Flynn could have brought some poetry to that role. It certainly would have been a better fate for him than to be in this much lesser film.

Neagle dances up a storm, mostly in her dreams

[SimonJack · 6/10 · 20 April 2022]

"Let's Make Up" is the American title of the British film I watched on DVD, "Lilacs in the Spring." Some people may see this sort of film as sappy, but the British audiences of the early 1950s like it. One other reviewer mentioned that the English generally like this sort of film.

Well this is a combination comedy, romance and musical, with some fantasy and drama, and set on the edge of the Second World War. The fantasy is imaginary scenes dreamed by Anna Neagle's Carole Beaumont during her lapses or periods of unconscious after having suffered a blow on the head during London bombing inn WW II. The plot is a little complicated with her father, John Beaumont, played by Errol Flynn, who has bene living in America where he is a major cinema star in Hollywood. He went there after WW I when his stage star faded in England and that of his wife (also Carole Beaumont and played by Neagle), rose. Beau had taken her under his wing to make her a star, but she then didn't wanted to leave the British stage to go to American with her husband.

There's more to this love story as well; but then skipping to WW II and the young girl's rise under another actor/director, Charles King (played by David Farrar). Eventually, Beau travels to England to see his daughter whom he has seen for years, and King is about to head out with a show troupe for Burma to entertain the British and Allied forces there. Will love win out this time, or show business again break up another couple? Perhaps the vice of experience in the person of another successful actor and father, Beau Beaumont will help the decision.

The dancing, music and show numbers in this film are very good and the main reason to see this film. Neagle does more dancing with some very good variety that I had seen in any other film of hers that I've watched. And Flynn gets in some nice soft shoe. It's a nice period film of the times, history, customs, and people and what they enjoyed in entertainment.

In praise of the 'Dame'.

[davidallen-84122 · 8/10 · 12 July 2017]

Most of the reviews imply that Errol Flynn carries "Lilacs In The Spring".Not so.The film belongs to the one and only Dame Anna Neagle.Her's is a tour de force performance and her age(around fifty at the time) in no way detracts from her convincing,multi-layered portrayal of the daughter-mother-daughter characters.This lady is pure class and with her peaches and cream complexion,gracious presence and incredible versatility,she is a delight in every scene.The somewhat confusing plot has been expertly explained by the other reviewers (thank you) and like them,I have only been able to acquire a murky,poor quality video print.I remember seeing it the cinema in 1956 and it was magic all the way. Looking at the film now,I'm astounded at Anna Neagle's dancing skills.Whether dancing the tango,waltz or,best of all,her 1920's 'Dance Little Lady' number,she's enchantment all the way.Arguably a better dancer than a singer,she nevertheless delivers two lovely renditions of 'We'll Gather Lilacs' and she's ravishing dancing to the orchestral version. Errol Flynn fans may only show interest in his contribution but by the time he appeared in this film he was clearly past his prime (the kindest thing I can say).Fortunately,he had the amazing Anna Neagle to prop him up in all their scenes together.Bravo,Dame Anna!