From my Facebook archives, July 19, 2015:
Lillian Russell. 20th Century Fox, 1940. A few weeks back we finally got around to seeing another of Alice Faye's musicals (after seeing the excellent Alexander's Ragtime Band a few months ago).
The film Lillian Russell s a bio-pic of a superstar actress of the turn of the last century. Alas we don't get a good sense of Russell as a performer in this film. Alice Faye does sing in elaborate 1890s outfits, but apparently the actual Lillian Russell did a lot more than sing. The story is also extremely fictionalized so you don't get a good sense of Russell as a person either. After reading about her, I discovered that her actual story was far more interesting than the screenplay of this film.
What is interesting in the movie is seeing the nostalgia for the late 1800s, a period which so many then alive remembered very well, and seeing the negative portrayal of Russell's suffragette-activist mother. Also, there are a couple good songs. My favorite is one Russell's composer-husband, played by Don Ameche (who is underutilized in this film), sings to Alice Faye, "Blue Lovebird." While many of the songs are from the appropriate era, that was a new song written for the movie.
Henry Fonda is also in the film and plays an important, but boring, character. Edward Arnold and Warren William have smaller roles and are far more fun to watch.
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