(3 of 3)
Two subjects fill the thoughts of the lost souls in this installment-plan inferno: steaks and sex. About the one they are mighty particular, but as for the other, it's the old story: familiarity breeds attempt. As a matter of fact, it soon becomes apparent that the movie is less concerned with contemporary social structure than with the eternal question of how girls are built. And the answer the film seems to suggest is that girls are very hard indeed to build, but quite easy to make.
The Helen Morgan Story (Warner). In days of old when girls were bold and torches were in fashion, some said the flame that burned the loveliest shade of blue was in the voice of Helen Morgan. She was the sad little girl with the big, scared eyes, who sat on a grand piano, twisted an abnormally large handkerchief and sang of bleeding hearts and faded flowers in a voice as dark and striking as the ring around a bathtub—after the gin has been siphoned out. It was the voice of the self-torturing '20s, filled with a sort of sobjectivity that one critic described as "the authentic note of heartbreak," and it went over big. She made a million dollars, and she spent it like a drunken singer. Soaked in alcohol, the Morgan torch burned bright for a few years, outdazzling all others when she played the original Julie in Show Boat. But the torch soon guttered out, and she died at 41 of an exhausted liver.
A sorry tale. Why bother to tell it? The producers apparently thought the public was ready to hear some of Helen's ballads belted once again, and they may be right. Some of the Jerome Kern and George Gershwin songs—Why Was I Born?, The Man I Love, Someone to Watch over Me, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man—are wonderful of their kind. Some of them, moreover, are mighty well sung by Gogi Grant, whose gutsy voice is dubbed into the gutless performance of Actress Ann Blyth. As for the rest of the picture, it offers the moviegoer little more than the opportunity, wearisomely frequent in recent years, of listening to the interminable troubles of one more drunk. Indeed, if the alcoholic content of Hollywood movies gets any higher, the law might fairly require a producer to add to the usual screen credits a line declaring the picture's proof.