Girl on the Spot (1946) User Reviews

A rare chance to mix Gilbert and Sullivan with murder.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 7 August 2018]

Pretty Lois Collier is a forgotten Jane Powell type singer who is a witness to murder here and becomes the target of some buffoonish hit men (Richard Lane and Edward Brophy) as she prepares to star in a Broadway revival of "The Pirates of Penzance". She's being mentored by the sweet Ludwig Stossel, a faded conductor whose Gilbert and Sullivan company is only put on Broadway as a way of trapping the killers. In addition to songs from "Pirates", there are also a few tunes from "HMS Pinafore", and smart viewers will immediately notice a resemblance between this and the finale of the 1978 comedy thriller "Foul Play" where Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn had to trap a killer during a performance of "The Mikado". I found the actual performances of the two Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to be substandard outside of Collier, rather cheap looking, and certainly not at all Broadway worthy. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were performed with great regularity at New York's City Center up until the 1960's, but until the 1980's revival of "The Pirates of Penzance" (updated for modern audiences), they were not considered worthy of a fully staged Broadway revival. The performance of "Pirates" at the end jumps from the beginning of the show to the very end after its interruption, making a jarring cut for Gilbert and Sullivan fans. However, the sight of Lane and Brophy in very bad drag (trying to look like society matrons) is hysterical, especially as they hem and haw over shooting Collier because of "how beautiful" it all appears to be, weeping while struggling to put off shooting her. In spite of the weak community theater like performances of the two classic shows, this does end up being an entertaining movie, and the coincidence of how this was later re-done in "Foul Play" quite amusing. Donald MacBride is also very funny in his usual characterization as the slow-burning policeman, getting laughs from basically doing what he had done since his film debut years before.