The Velvet Touch

Rosalind Russell and Leo Genn

In The Velvet Touch, a Broadway star accidentally kills the impresario who made her, in an argument about whether she should abandon frothy comedy (and him) and pursue a more noble career in the serious theatre. That’s the opening scene dealt with. The rest of the film concerns itself with the fate of the actress. Will she get caught, confess the crime or get away with it? Whether it’s to indicate her character’s superior opinion of herself or to mask her own incipient double chin, Rosalind Russell plays Valerie as a head-held-high kind of gal, an actress who fancied herself in an upcoming production of Hedda Gabler. But the impresario who made her, … Read more

Meet Me in St Louis

meet me 2

“Clang clang clang went the trolley” and ring ring ring went the tills in every box office all over America when Meet Me in St Louis arrived in 1944. Made when the war in the Pacific was at its height, it was a chocolate-boxy feast of nostalgia even then, a story about a decent paterfamilias (Leon Ames) considering uprooting his family and moving them from cosy St Louis to New York. What could be more appropriate in wartime than a film about a lifestyle under threat? Poor Esther (Judy Garland), the second oldest daughter. How is she ever going to croon and spoon with “The Boy Next Door”? Poor Tootie (an Oscar to … Read more