The Heat's On

Mae West and Hazel Scott both have great numbers in this loosely constructed plot which is mostly a showcase for different songs and acts, halfway between vaudeville follies and the more structured musicals of the 50s and 60s.

What a mess! Hazel Scott was a revelation, but everything else just a clunker. Like others hoping to finally catch this sixty year old curio, I was dismayed to see how truly dull and silly it was/is. As a major fan of Mae West, I wondered, come on, how bad could it be? And hey, how come our leading lady only gets equal billing with ... such second level comics? How did she get mixed-up in this? What was disheartening was Mae herself. Sad, unfunny, tired --- could that be Mae West, trapped in round after round of awful lines? No wonder her flight from films after this mishap. Even her work, at age 75ish in the bizarre but unique "MyraB", was better. OK, we still have all those pre 1940 films to relish, all is forgiven Mae!

Watching this is painful. Mae West has little to do. What she has, she does decently. Mae was never a true beauty, at least not in movies. Here she looks her age and the Gay Nineties costume seems more out of place than it does in other, earlier, better movies. She isn't even billed over the title. It's a hapless review, with Xavier Cugat and some corn-pone comedy. Hazel Scott's appearances are good but nothing I'd have sought out and irrelevant to Mae. Sextette seemed like a vanity production, a mistake of her own making. This is a hodgepodge that gives her little to do and is as prim as the bluenose character in its plot (amusingly played by Almira Sessions