Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

dougdoepke Hollywood was turning out these slightly built musicals by the score during the war. Though this one wasn't released until mid-'46, it has all the markings. Hotshot bomber pilot Pat (Wade) meets nightclub singer Louise (Langford) and, guess what, they fall in love. Trouble is he's already engaged to conniving, snooty Eileen (Greer) who won't let him go. So romantic complications ensue. In between these, Langford gets to warble a few tunes, while the fast- talking Edwards gets to act the bigshot promoter. Add the always wise-cracking Iris Adrian as somebody or other named Montana, and you've got an entertaining cast. Sure, it's all forgotten 10-minutes later, but in the meantime, the shenanigans go down like a pleasant little snack.

marcslope Anthony Mann, of all people, shows a very capable hand with the musical form in this RKO B, a very-end-of-the-war mixture of patriotism, class consciousness, and utter nonsense. Among its virtues: Frances Langford, always likable and singing up a storm; Iris Adrian, Pauline Kael's favorite sarcastic sidekick of the '40s; Ralph Edwards, showing surprising pre-"This Is Your Life" comic deftness as a scheming agent; and Jane Greer, as Russell Wade's bitch-girlfriend, as stock-character a villainess as you'll ever see. The songs aren't much, but Frances does nicely by "Good for Nothing' But Love" (twice), and a South Sea Islands production number is hilariously, endearingly tacky, with chorus girls slinking about in godawful choreography. The story has loose ends that aren't tied neatly together, and it ends very abruptly, but it's an enjoyable low- budget programmer that fairly screams 1946.

David (Handlinghandel) I am a great fan of Anthony Mann because of his brilliant and inventive, sometimes scary noirs. I knew he'd directed other types of movies but this is the first (other than his later Westerns and 1950s stuff) I've seen.This is a very appealing romantic comedy. Frances Langford was no great actress but she had a pretty mezzo. She is a little like Doris Day, it seems, and a little like the great Anita Ellis.Russell Wade: Why didn't this guy have a major career? He is very good here, as he is in "The Ghost Ship." And I almost didn't recognize Jane Greer as his bitchy society-girl fiancée! She is (as always, except in a 1950s comedy whose name blessedly escapes me) wonderful. She seemed best in noirs, as bad girls with no conscience. Here she is a rich girl with no conscience.This has the same structure as classic noirs. It is told in flashback. I found the movie appealing from start to finish.

Alice Liddel As a masterclass in what a great auteur can do with trite, uncharacteristic material, 'The Bamboo Blonde' is a must see. With a bizarre mixture of war propaganda, romantic comedy and musical, Mann manages to offer a prototype of the frayed masculinity so familiar from his noirs, Westerns and historical epics (see the final third, the ritual humiliation of the amiable hero); as well as his subversive interest in signs (see especially the musical number where the heroine walks through a landscape of labelled props), and the gaping difference between their value and the reality they hide. All this AND Jane Greer, as duplicitous a nay-sayer here to American masculinity as she would be a year later in the greatest ever noir, 'Out of the Past'.