The Man I love. 1947

This film begins on a very promising note. Two drunks are trying to get into a jazz club on 52nd street in Manhattan, but a guy fixing the sign outside the joint tells them its late and the place in closed. The two drunks hear music coming from within and the sign guy tells them that a private jam session is in progress. The camera enters the club and there is a group of musicians performing while Petey Brown played by Ida Lupino sings the title song, but she’s not really singing she’s dubbed by Peg La Centra. If you want to hear Ida really sing which is not very pretty check out the movie Road House. Anyway there’s some snappy talk between Ida and the boys, and before we can get comfortable and settle in for a nice New York cigarette smoke filled noir story, she announces that she’s going back to California to visit her family for the Christmas holidays. Going back to California what the fuck, she’s leaving 1947 New York City for California? Now here is where the film goes down hill very fast. So Ida goes home to visit with her two pretty sisters one who slings hash in some restaurant and another younger sister who would rather stay at home and baby sit for the couple next door than go out. There is also a not so good but dull brother who is dabbling in the underworld by working for a swarthy pussy hound nightclub owner Nicky Toresca played by the good-looking Robert Alda, the father of Alan. Robert has the hots for the waitress sister played by Andrea King but she will have nothing to do with him, because she is married to a soldier who has shell shock and is bidding his time in some military loony bin. They also have a little son, who gets into fights because his friends tease him about have a crazy father. They all live in a small dumpy apartment that could be anywhere US of A, and has no sense of being in California. There are also some next door neighbors a mismatched husband and wife team with newborn twins. The wife is very good looking, bored and is hot to trot and the henpecked husband who works at night has no idea that when he’s at work she’s on the town with any guy who will pick up her drink tab. The boob thinks she’s out with her girlfriends taking in a show. You see there’s way too much plot and this is all in the first 20 or so minutes. So it’s Christmas eve, and in pops Ida fresh as a daisy with lots of presents and looking as if she was right next door just sitting around in her dressing room, which she probably was and not on some Goddamn train going cross country. Soon Ida is making plans for the family, playing big sister, putting her nose into everyone’s business and slinking around town until she crosses paths with Robert Alda who of course tries to get his mitts on her muff. But Ida being Ida or Petey won’t have anything to do with him, except accept his offer of a job to chirp at his nightclub. So Ida’s stand in voice starts belting out a few songs, and more and more complications happen. In a clumsy plot twist she falls for a sad down on his luck jazz piano player Sand Thomas (now that’s a name for you) played by hunky Bruce Bennett who a year or so before was taken for a ride by Mildred Pierce, so no wonder he’s blue. Ida falls immediately in love with him, but he’s feeling only so so for her, but still he boffs her in the usual uptight Hollywood 1940’s way. You know the roaring fireplace the couple on the floor having an after sex smoke, and of course we know they did it, even though they are as tightly clothed as if they were about to take a walk around the block. More and more melodrama follows, the sluttish neighbor comes to a bad end, the sister’s army husband suddenly recovers and is his old self again just in time for the closing scene, and Bruce Bennett who is still carrying the torch for his ex society bitch wife who by the way we never see hops a Warner Brothers steamer to some place foreign. The film ends with Ida walking away after saying goodbye to Bruce in the fog with Glycerin tears staining her cheeks. The end. Now you might be thinking hey this film sounds like fun, but it wasn’t and if you want to spend 20.00 bucks getting it from the Warner Brothers archive please go ahead be my guest. Me I got it for free from the library. There are also scenes that have been cut from this print according to whats on the trailer, which is the only extra on the disc. The director Raoul Walsh was the wrong guy to helm this load and it looks like he couldn’t decide if this was a melodrama, a woman’s weepy or a film noir gangster film and so we are left with a little of this and a little of that. The writers of the screenplay didn’t give him much help with things either. There are a few good lines like Ida telling Robert Alda 'Do you always come in without knocking? You almost scared me right out of my new hair dye.' but the screenwriters also lift some of the closing lines from Casablanca and to me that is unforgivable.