Starring Mitzi Gaynor, Dale Robertson, Una Merkel, and Dennis Day
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Music and Lyrics by various
Many beloved entertainers of the 19th and early 20th centuries who existed before film and record could permanently capture their talents are all but forgotten today. Case in point is the titular subject of this biography. I never heard of Lotta Crabtree until I read about this movie in a book on classic films as a teenager. Is her story worth hearing now, almost 160 years after this movie's Civil War setting? Let's begin in the little California gold rush boom town of Rabbit's Creek as the dancing star Lola Montez (Carmen D'Antonio) is passing through and find out...
The Story: Charlotte "Lotta" Crabtree (Gaynor) is the schoolgirl daughter of Mary Ann (Merkel) and John Crabtree (James Barton), who own a boarding house in Rabbit Creek. Lotta wants nothing more than to be a great performer like her idol Montez. Determined to see her despite the protests of her mother and her guy friend Mart Taylor (Day), she goes out to the local saloon with handsome southern gambler Tom Richmond (Robertson). Her mother is mortified when Mart catches her. She's even more horrified when her husband gambles away their money and their boarding house.
Lotta knows Lola earned a pile of money riding through miner's camps and playing for the men there. She, Mart, her mother, and a group of local musicians opt to do the same. It's here that Lotta develops her vivacious, child-like stage persona. Richmond follows the troupe from camp to camp, watching every performance. She falls in love with him, before he claims he's a gambler, and then a Confederate spy stealing gold for his cause. Lotta turns him away after that, but she can't forget him. Even after her father wins a theater in San Francisco, where she becomes the most popular dancing star in the west, and a tour that makes her the hottest thing going from coast to coast, he's always on her mind and in her heart.
The Song and Dance: The authentic California Gold Rush setting and numbers and Gaynor's excellent performance as Crabtree makes this one unique among musical biographies. I love the colorful period costumes, outdoor shooting, and lively routines to real songs of the time. Gaynor has a wonderful time as Lotta, dancing up a storm, making a passable stubborn teen, and even managing to pull off her dramatic scenes with Lotta and Tom late in the film. Merkel and Barton also have a lot of fun as Lotta's prudish mother who may not approve of her daughter's dancing, but knows a gambler when she sees one, and her easily swayed gambler father.
Favorite Number: We get to see Barton show off his own dancing chops with Gaynor in the charming "California Moon" in the opening sequence in the boarding house. Later, he joins her for Day sweetly performs the Oscar-nominated ballad "Never" as part of their first mining camp show, before he and Gaynor take over for the ruffles-and-parasol romp "On Sunday Morning." Hoping to get the miners to throw gold, Gaynor returns for a wild danced reprise in tights and a far shorter skirt, to the shock of her mother! She gets another sexy-cute number, "Kiss Me Quick and Go," with a male quartet a bit later, after she's discovered Tom's deception.
Gaynor performs a heartfelt "Dixie" in the finale as a tribute to Alabama-born Tom. She's booed by the victorious Union crowds, until Mart reminds them that they're all one country now.
Trivia: The fountain mentioned in the opening sequence that Lotta donated to the city of San Francisco still exists today, though in a different spot from where it was when this movie was filmed.
Lotta did tour miner's camps before and during the Civil War...but she actually started in show business as early as 6, and her parents had no trouble with her choice of careers. Her father owned a bookshop in addition to the boarding house. Lola Montez was a family friend, and she died in 1861, before the movie starts.
Gaynor would later call Golden Girl one of her favorites of her films.
What I Don't Like: For all the authentic setting and music, the biography is a little too manufactured. In real life, Lotta Crabtree focused entirely on her career and never married, or even had a great romance like the one depicted with the fictional Tom Richmond. Doubt she ever carried gold for the Union, either, no matter how much of a lift that sequence gives the middle of the film. Day always came off a lot better on TV and radio than he did on film. He's just as annoying here as he was in other movies I've caught him in like Music In Manhattan.
And despite being the film's more-or-less theme song, "Oh Dem Golden Slippers" wasn't written until 1879.
The Big Finale: Charming western musical with enjoyable period numbers that's worth a watch if you love Gaynor or the big Technicolor films of the 1950's.
Home Media: DVD-only from the 20th Century Fox Cinema Archive.
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