Sleepy Lagoon (1943) User Reviews

And lots of sleepy goons also...but fun.

[horn-5 · 24 November 2005]

Transient workers are pouring into Sleepy Lagoon by the thousands to work in the local defense factories, with no means of finding good clean fun in a town that has been moribund as its name for years past. They have been squandering their earnings and going into debt at the gambling houses, hostesses-provided dance halls and saloons that have opened up overnight.

Judy Joyner (Judy Canova), young radio personality whose voice is heard nightly over the local radio station, is put up as mayoralty candidate on an all-femme reform ticket, backed by suffragette Sarah Rogers (Ruth Donnelly), and wins the election easily against the shady politicians headed by pork-barreling Mayor Cyrus Coates (Will Wright.)Mrs. Crumm (Margaret Reid) is chosen by Judy to be the new chief-of-police.

Judy thinks re-opening the derelict old amusement park down by the shore will serve as the amusement place needed to solve the problems, and sends for her Uncle Dudley (Ernest Truex), a carnival man from way back, to be the manager.

But Jay Lucarne, alias The Brain (Douglas Fowley), the gambling racketeer for whom Dudley stooges for a living, sees the Sleepy Lagoon set-up as a fool-proof dish of gravy into which he can dip his fingers with full official protection of the girl-mayor, unknowingly to her. He forces Dudley, with a gun in his back and threats against his niece, to accept the job and The Brain and his gang of thugs move in on Sleepy Lagoon. Before long, a flourishing gambling hall is being run in a subterranean hall beneath the park...and Judy is facing charges of political corruption.

Corn in the capital.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 30 April 2019]

Judy Canova plays a singing radio star who is elected mayor of a teeny tiny city rattled by corruption, and her first act is to clean it all up. Judy's desired by two men (nerdy Dennis Day and dumb lug Joe Sawyer), with Sawyer seemingly secretly in cahoots with the force mayor Will Wright to find secret ways to keep gambling in the small dot on the county map. Naive Canova somehow manages to get framed for the gambling racket and must find a way to clear herself and win back the favor of the people who voted her in.

This is an enjoyable but often silly second feature, featuring Dennis Day singing as both his bespectacled character and even briefly Day himself, with Judy making cracks about Jack Benny renewing his radio contract. Ruth Donnelly is a delight as the head of the local woman's league, responsible for getting Canova elected. There's a smattering of mediocre songs, the highlight being a rather elaborately staged number in a carnival fun house.

Certainly, the humor is very dated and corny, the political elements of the plot unbelievable, and Canova an acquired taste. But it's ahead of its time as it deals with the power of women running things while many men were off fighting in the second world war. Topical references of the time may go over most people's heads, but there's a lot of fun to be had with the multiple carnival sequences which includes the fun house which seems to be the size of a factory.