Remains to Be Seen (1953) User Reviews

June's last Metro picture is a middling affair

[jjnxn-1 · 7/10 · 30 October 2014]

Neither terrible nor an effervescent delight this minor comic mystery has the usual MGM sheen and excellent supporting staff but plot holes you could drive a truck through.

The story, or what there is of it, is harmless enough but characters aside from the featured pair just drop out of view with no explanation or resolution to their part of the tale. Case in point Louis Calhern is charming and funny at the beginning of the film then vanishes while it seems he should still be there. Angela Lansbury, in what amounts to a cameo, is chic and forbidding but she pops in and out at random points and also disappears abruptly.

While the film definitely has shortcomings it also has some charms chief among them a nightclub performance by an absolutely sensational looking Dorothy Dandridge who is in fine voice, it's worth watching the film to catch it alone.

This last pairing of June Allyson and Van Johnson shows the studio that made her a star was running out of ideas of how to showcase her. She was wise to move on since her next film, The Glenn Miller Story, opened up a whole new career for her as the perfect wife to numerous big stars in several huge hits over the coming decade.

Strictly for fans of the two top-lined stars, if you like them you'll enjoy the film but it's neither performers best work.

"He's down!" "He's dead!"

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 8 November 2020]

So says Van Johnson in the second half of that quote to the TV reporting on a boxing match. The dead man allegedly died of a heart attack, but later was found with a knife in his chest, and later evidence indicates that he had died from unnatural causes. Johnson, the manager of the New York City luxury apartment, was not the first to find the body, but was the first to report it. The suspect list gradually increases with Louis Calhern, Angela Lansbury, Kathryn Card and Sammy White among those with suspicions, White being an ex-con bellhop who claims to have found the dead men first. When June Allyson arrives as the dead man's niece, the stage is set for a battle over his estate.

This hit Broadway play features a few musical sequences but is not a musical. Allyson lipscinks to her own recording of "Toot Toot Tootsie", and Johnson warbles a weird version of "You're Just Too Marvelous" which questions why he would be cast in musicals in the first place. Allyson's reprise of it is also a bit bizarre. But Dorothy Dandridge's version of "Taking a Chance on Love" is quite upbeat and gives an indication why she would later be cast as Carmen Jones.

There are some people who seem more suspicious than others, with Lansbury an obvious top choice playing a dark lady with self serving motivations for wanting to get her hands on the dead man's cash. A few musical sequences aside, this is a very amusing light murder mystery comedy that shows a definite chemistry between its two leads and indicates why Johnson and Allyson work together several times. Card's shrill apartment board member is very funny, a complete opposite of her characterization as Lucy's ditsy mother on TV's then most popular sitcom. This is one of MGM's more artistic romantic comedies, and fast moving fun with bits of tension added as Allyson is stalked in a very creepy sequence that utilizes some interesting camera shots to set up the melodramatic scene.

Remains To Be Seen on DVD?

[samtrak1204 · 1/10 · 15 December 2009]

For years I've been wishing and hoping to see Dorothy Dandridge in "Remains to be Seen" on DVD. I've only seen a short clip of Dorothy's stunning night club number and it is a visual knock out! Lena Horne's movie appearances were largely confined to such cameo scenes which could easily be extracted for southern audiences whose only acceptable image of a black woman was an grinning eye popping big black mammy in a head rag serving "Miss Charlotte". Still Ruby Dandridge (Dorothy's "Mommie Dearest") made a good point when she quipped, "It's better to play a maid than BE a maid." Maybe daughter Dorothy used the same logic years later when she decided to PLAY a slave in "Tomango"...or maybe it was a simple choice "to work or not to work" since DD was offered no leading roles after "Carmen". There was just no decent work for a beautiful colored girl in Hollywood in those days and things haven't really changed that much. Halle Berry, Dorothy Dandridge reincarnated, still faces and fights racism and typecasting at the myth factory. Why doesn't MGM release this dud solely for avid Dandrige fans like me who would gobble it up? I also look forward to seeing a restored "Tomango" and "Porgy and Bess" on DVD. Other Dandridge movies that have not been released on DVD include "Blues for a Junkman"(TV)/"Murder Men"(European version w/nude scenes)" "The Decks Ran Red" "Bright Road" "Four Shall Die" "Malaga" and "Marco Polo".

Allyson and Johnson make a great couple

[carmike · 8/10 · 19 January 2002]

Let's get this straight right from the start: "Remains To Be Seen" is neither a cinematic masterpiece nor a standout comedy, even by the standards of its time. The storyline is rather thin, too, plus the movie tries to be a comedy and a mystery thriller simultaneously, a combination that rarely works.

Still, I like it a great deal. Why? As a light comedy, it's certainly entertaining and even a sourpuss will get at least some laughs out of it. Then, it's the setting, New York City in the early 1950s, a fancy apartment building on Park Avenue. I admit I've always been sold on 1940s and 1950s culture (including movies), the architecture, the automobiles, jazz music and even the way people used to dress back then. Americans in those days may have been a bunch of commie-baiting, racist, chauvinist bigots (I'm not saying they were, but they've certainly been amply characterized as such), but they sure had style, much more so than today (but that goes for popular culture in most Western countries, including Germany).

Anyway, what makes this movie really worth watching is the chemistry between the two main characters, played by June Allyson and Van Johnson. They gas each other practically the moment they meet, a fully credible romance one simply has to find enchanting. They're a wonderful match, two wholesome and outstandingly likeable people who seem to have been made for each other.

Other plusses for "Remains To Be Seen" are a host of great character actors like Louis Calhern, Barry Kelley and Angela Lansbury and, last but not least, an all-too-brief appearance by the magnificent Dorothy Dandridge, playing herself in a spirited, swinging and highly sophisticated rendition of that wonderful song "Taking A Chance On Love". Plenty of good swing music in that movie in general.

All the more reason to watch "Remains To Be Seen", which I caught on German Television late at night (and videotaped on that occasion). I'll keep it forever, that's for sure.

A strange murder of a dead man creates a flocking crowd of intrigues

[clanciai · 9/10 · 9 May 2020]

This is an ingenious criminal comedy with great show numbers sprinkled into it - the main highlight being a grandiose performance by Dorothy Dandridge at a night club, which by the way is the funniest scene in the film, as there is a tremendous amount of confusion here which mainly afflicts the waiters, while June Allyson and Van Johnson just have their first great evening together. There is an impressing amount of very original scenes here, and the dialogue is virtuoso crossfire all the way - I don't think I have ever seen June Allyson in more splendid form, and yet she was always better than most. Here she even sings, while Van Johnson desperately shows off as a drummer. The crime business here is also quite a confusion, as the great mystery unfolds of a man already dead being stabbed, and it is never quite clearly explained why - it must seem a bit weird for someone to stab an already dead body and difficult to find a reason for it. By all means, he appears to have been an abominable person, June Allyson is his heiress and hates him for it even after his death, while the news of his death is the best news she ever got, while she considers the inheritance the worst. It's June Allyson's film more than any of the others, although Angela Lansbury also plays an awesome character, but she is the one who most remains to be seen. It's a gloriously witty dark comedy of very much hilarious fun, and it is strange that it hasn't been much appreciated and observed and paid more attention to for its remarkable originality.