Saturday Night Cinema: Down to Earth (1947)

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is Down to Earth (1947). More beautiful than ever, Rita Hayworth stars as Terpsichore, the Goddess of Dance. She is dazzling. If you can’t watch the whole thing, at least tune in for her first number. She really is a goddess.

From her perch Up Above, Terpsichore discovers that Broadway producer Danny Miller (Larry Parks) intends to put together a musical satire, lampooning herself and her fellow Greek Gods. Eliciting the aid of Heavenly emissary Mr. Jordan (Roland Culver, taking over from the earlier film’s Claude Rains), Terpsichore descends to Earth in human form, landing a role in Miller’s play. Through her bewitching influence, Miller agrees to abandon his plans for a satire, transforming his production into a portentiously serious “work of art”-which lays a large and noxious egg with the opening-night crowd. Somehow, our ethereal heroine manages to set things right, but there’s still one nagging problem: Will she, a goddess, ever be permitted to fall in love with a mere mortal like Miller? Repeating their Here Comes Mr. Jordan roles, James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton appear respectively as the eternally flustered Max Corkle (formerly a fight promoter, now a theatrical agent) and the pompous, rule-bound Heavenly messenger #7013. Silly but immensely entertaining, Down to Earth was remade as the sillier but decidedly less entertaining Xanadu in 1980.

A sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Columbia’s Down to Earth is a camp- and kitsch-lover’s delight.

Time Magazine, September 1, 2947:

Down to Earth (Columbia). In Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), a suave master of celestial ceremonies helped the soul of a dead prize fighter to inhabit the body of a surviving one, with happy results in the ring and at the movie box office. This time Mr. Jordan reaches higher for heavenly intervention, and escorts it a bit lower. The rosy shade of Terpsichore (Rita Hay-worth), outraged by a Broadway work-in-progress called Swinging the Muses, comes down to earth and gets into the act. She immediately dances herself into the lead of the show, and into a fine kettle of fish.

The show’s producer (Larry Parks) has staked his life as collateral against a gangster’s backing of the show. He plans to put on one of the most sodden of those productions whose success depends on a snarling contempt for any form of art higher than a Rockette’s hip joint. Terpsichore nags him into trying the only thing worse: really bad “Art.” Played her way, the show flops in Philadelphia. Played his way, it is a smash hit in New York. At this point Terpsichore is reluctant about returning to heaven; she has, of course, fallen for the Duffy Square Diaghilev.

The film may annoy those who do not thoroughly enjoy “swinging” everything in sight. It is also mildly dismaying to see that when the Muse of Dancing is really being herself, in her own ballet sequence, she can’t even get up on her points. Put after all, Down to Earth is a musical, and musicals are forgiven almost anything.

There are saving graces. Some of the side comedy, especially as handled by James Gleason as a Broadway agent, is very helpful. Miss Hayworth’s first dance, in a vivid sea-green dress, is a pleasure to watch. At moments it looks as if the ballet number might amount to something; and the finale—a sort of genteel Walpurgisnacht in an enormously enlarged Gramercy Park—nearly picks the heavy show up and carries it places. The picture has really attractive songs by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher (best: Let’s Stay Young Forever and People Have More Fun Than Anyone).

Desert Fury (Hal Wallls; Paramount) is easy to take with tongue in cheek, impossible to take with a straight face. The story: Mary Astor, who runs a Western gambling joint, doesn’t want her daughter, Lizabeth Scott, to take up with Gangster John Hodiak, who is acquiring a sun tan in the neighborhood. Burt Lancaster, a state trooper, loves her, and that ought to be enough for any girl. But there is no holding Lizabeth from love’s false course until, in a frenzy of fisticuffs and old-fashioned auto-chasing, she realizes that Hodiak is a bad ‘un in dead earnest.

These intricate difficulties are presented in a leathery, smart-cracking kind of dialogue that sounds like an illegitimate great-grandchild of Ernest Hemingway’s prose. A remarkable amount of footage is devoted to the way Miss Scott walks, chews over a line like a bit of Sen-Sen before getting it out, and tools a high-powered convertible around a curve. This is, in fact, one of the most auto-maniacal movies since James Cagney’s racing classic, The Crowd Roars (1932).

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spacearcadian

5 years ago

she married a muslim even in those islamophobic times. according to mohammad women need muslim men who take control, tell them what to do and teach them islam at home. more and more western women are discovering they need islam in their life., like lady diana, lindsay lohan, janet jackson, britney spears, sinead o’conor, etc.etc, …. western governments are bringing MILLIONS OF MUSLIM MEN to the west to be part of western women’s life…. nothing compares to islam????… cheers!

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santashandler

5 years ago

Reply to  spacearcadian

All those (western) women you mentioned, aren’t doing too well, are they? We know what happened to Diana. Lindsay Lameham probably won’t be acting again, because she’s gone off the deep end. Janet Jackson is not with her muslim husband, and look what happened to Sinead O’Connor. A total basket case. She doesn’t even know who she is. So, thanks for bringing up those names. We see first hand what islam has done to those women.

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Achmed Mohandjob

5 years ago

Reply to  santashandler

Did you read why Ms. Jackson left that moslem? The itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny size … she thought that she could tough it out and learn to adjust … but she simply couldn’t.

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santashandler

5 years ago

Reply to  Achmed Mohandjob

Well, that and the daily 4am call to prayer with all his buddies over all asses in the air

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Achmed Mohandjob

5 years ago

Reply to  santashandler

That probably had something to do with it, as well. But, in her own words, she blamed the size of its “malehood”.

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santashandler

5 years ago

Reply to  Achmed Mohandjob

Oooh

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Achmed Mohandjob

5 years ago

Reply to  santashandler

That’s probably NOT what she said.

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santashandler

5 years ago

Reply to  Achmed Mohandjob

Lol!!

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Alleged-Comment

5 years ago

This is a chick-flick. Nothing wrong. I like old movies. But I like Sci-Fi horror movies better. 😉

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