Blonde from Brooklyn (1945) User Reviews

I like blondes - even this one!

[JohnHowardReid · 6/10 · 24 August 2017]

Robert Stanton (Dixon Harper), Lynn Merrick (Jean Parker), Thurston Hall ("Colonel" Hubert Famsworth), Mary Treen (Jean's friend, Dianne Peabody), Walter Soderling (W. Wilson Wilbur), Arthur Loft (Daniel Frazier), Regina Wallace (Mrs Frazier), Byron Foulger (Lawyer Harey), Chester Clute (hotel manager), John Kelly (bartender), Myrtle Ferguson (Miss Quackenfish), Matt Willis (Curtis Rossmore), Eddie Bartel (Rickie Lester).

Director: DEL LORD. Original screenplay: Erna Lazarus. Photography: Burnett Guffey. Film editor: Jerome Thoms. Art director: Carl Anderson. Set decorator: George Montgomery. Sound recording: Lambert Day. Producer: Ted Richinond.

Copyright 21 June 1945 by Columbia Pictures Corp. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: 21 June 1945. U.K. release: 4 March 1946. Australian release: 29 November 1945. 6,074 feet. 67 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: A would-be crooner teams up with a would-be songbird in order that they will both land a job by impersonating a Southern couple. Complications arise when it is incorrectly assumed that the girl is a long-missing heiress.

COMMENT: Pleasant, though very minor musical comedy, completely studio-bound, somewhat talky, and limited to about six or seven sets.

Nevertheless, the script is mildly engaging, the cast is great (Robert Stanton is Dick Haymes' brother), and the direction is far more proficient than Del Lord's usual mediocre standard.

Guffey's photography, alas, does not rise to the occasion and is pretty undistinguished. But I guess you can't have everything, can you?

It's an old southern custom.....

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 28 September 2016]

This delightfully silly musical comedy is a breezy hour of good humored humbug and hogwash, filled with fiddle dee dee, memories of sprawling magnolia trees, mint julips and porch swings. All set in the music world of Manhattan, which is actually south of... Albany. Record store phone girl Lynn Merrick is fired from her job for flirting too much over the wires, and meets up with the charming Robert Stanton for an impromptu date. Their joking around about old southern customs is overheard by fake southern colonel Thurstan Hall who decides to utilize their singing talents by changing her blonde from Brooklyn background to turn her into a singing southern belle, and after achieving success, she discovers that her made up heiress is actually the beneficiary to a huge estate. What's a phony belle from across the east river to do?

This outlandish plot is ridiculous, absurd and delightful. When Stanton and Merrick get together to sing the rousing "Alabamy Bound", magic is made There's the Mary Wickes/Eve Arden like Mary Treen dropping cracks, a few songs and a silly plot that just gets more complicated, yet fun to watch unravel. Hall takes over the type of lovable old codgers that Charles Coburn usually played, and while he didn't get an Oscar, he did manage to steal every scene he's in. I just love the name they give Merrick's micro managing boss, a puckered old maid named Miss Quackenfish. I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when Hall referred to her as "Miss Silverfish". My TV would have been soaked!

Okay time killer

[vandino1 · 5 January 2007]

Nothing special here. Robert Stanton plays a crooner looking for a gig singing on the radio for a sponsor named "Plantation Coffee." Considering the name of the company, he figures playing a "southerner" will get him the job, and he ropes singer Lynn Merrick into the idea with him (since he'd accidentally helped her lose her job earlier as a jukebox girl). But they find they need a coach and that's where Thurston Hall comes in as "The Colonel." He's a hustler himself and is willing to coach them in Southern ways in exchange for a "stipend." It looks like the kids get the gig, but complications ensue when the phony Southern-style name that the Colonel has given Merrick, "Bellwether", turns out to be mistakenly attached to an $800,000 inheritance. Merrick can't live with the fraud, so frantic farce ensues as she and the Colonel and Stanton attempt to find a way out of it, including a phony heir-for-hire (Matt Willis--an actor with a very goofy-looking puffed-out mouth). Of course everything works out in the end for all concerned. The title of the film is off: it should be called "A Southern Belle from Brooklyn" since the actual title is meaningless with regards to the story. Incidentally, Stanton is the brother of famed vocalist Dick Haymes and is also sometimes credited as Bob Haymes. He had a good speaking and singing voice, and okay looks, but his film and singing career never took off. But he did write the beautiful and successful song "That's All." As for this film, it certainly didn't help his career and for today's audiences it's dated and trivial (the jukebox-girl job especially a head scratcher for present-day viewers). It's a passable entertainment, nothing more.

Great 40's film

[jerryekautz · 8/10 · 14 October 2014]

I really enjoyed this one. It came on GET TV the other day out of the blue and i have it on my TIVO. I have since ordered a DVD to have my own copy. I have watched this one twice already and really enjoy the songs.

The premise is a bit routine but its just a fun movie to watch if you like 40's singing. I think its really great and I enjoyed it no matter what. The "Colonel" reminds me of foghorn leghorn in his antics and manner of speaking.

Everyone that enjoys old movies should watch this one.

This now ranks as one of my two favorite old movies, Imitation of life, the 1930's one and now this one.

A musical. Nothing special.

[mkilmer · 8 April 2007]

Everyone in this THE BLONDE FROM BROOKLYN has a scam, except the blonde from Brooklyn (Lynn Merrick). The soldier (Robert Stanton) musters out and wants to do a singing act as a southerner. He enlists the jukebox girl, who is the blonde from Brooklyn, to be his partner, a southern belle. She thus has her scam.

They meet a southerner, 'Colonel' Hubert Farnsworth, whose probably never was a colonel. He gave the blonde from Brooklyn her story, makes her the granddaughter of an old girlfriend from the South. It happens that the blonde from Brooklyn, as the fiction granddaughter of a real family, is heir to that family's fortune, and they spend the film trying to dodge the lawyer and the fraud charges which would ensue were she to accept the fortune. But she also cannot reveal that it's a scam, as then she and the soldier would lose their lucrative radio gig.

This was not the best film I've seen this year. It could well have been the worst, but that's a relative term. We watched the entire thing and my wife didn't mutter afterward, so if you like old pictures with song, you might go for it.