Starring Sonja Henie, Michael O'Shea, Marie McDonald, and Bill Johnson
Directed by William A. Seiter
Music and Lyrics by various
By 1945, Henie was making more off her live ice skating shows than her movies. After her last 20th Century Fox film, Wintertime, was a flop, they let her go. She was picked up by the newly-created International Pictures in 1944. Former Fox head off production William Goetz wanted to make movies with the same high budgets and stars as the studio he left. It's a Pleasure got the royal treatment, including Technicolor, an elaborate production, and two popular stage leading men to play off Henie. How well did he do with this story of a figure skater who marries a down-and-out hockey player? Let's begin at the hockey area, where figure skater Chris Linden (Henie) eagerly watches the star she has a crush on, Don Martin (O'Shea), and find out...
The Story: Don is kicked off the team after he punches a referee during a game. Chris introduces Don to Buzz Fletcher (Johnson), who runs an ice skating revue. He'll take Chris and her troupe, who were skating between hockey rounds, and him too. Don's athletic moves prove to be a big draw for audiences and for Chris, whom he marries.
Chris adores Don, but she doesn't love his heavy drinking. Buzz's bored wife Gail (McDonald) also has a crush on Don and is furious when he doesn't return her interest. She gets him drunk right before his big solo. Angry and disappointed, Chris goes on a long tour with Buzz's show after he fires Don. It's Gail, however, who finally brings the two together in the end when she locates Don and gets him to the theater for Chris' latest show.
The Song and Dance: One of the reasons Henie left Fox was they wouldn't let her do a movie in color. I'm glad she got her wish here. This movie looks gorgeous, with its glittering, glamorous skating show costumes and dazzling backdrops for the show. Even the copy currently on Amazon is in surprisingly good shape for such a minor title. It almost literally glows. I also give RKO credit for giving Henie a slightly darker plot than the silly romantic comedies Fox dumped Henie in. This snow cone has a little spice in it, with Gail practically throwing herself at Don and Chris' skater friend Wilma (Iris Adrian) snarking about Don's behavior every step of the way.
Favorite Number: We start out at the hockey game with the chorus, the instrumental "Nobody's Sweetheart." Ladies in green skate for the audience before Sonja arrives in gleaming white to show off her trademark dizzying spins. There isn't another number until midway through the film, when Chris has to go on for her drunk husband. Sonja comes out in brilliant magenta, her hair up in feathers, for a fully solo routine.
"Summer Dance" at the show in the finale is one of her very rare off-ice numbers. She does a lovely duet with a male dancer, this time with her pink gown nearly floating against a backdrop of emerald trees and a silvery pond. The last number is "Romance," which switches the pond to winter. Henie now glides like a snow queen against a backdrop of white and silver, with the chorus floating around her in scarlet.
What I Don't Like: Other than those big numbers in the finale, this frappe isn't much fun. Neither O'Shea nor Johnson make much of an impression. They're so bland, you have no idea why Chris or Gail would cause so much trouble over them. Henie never was much of an actress; many of the heavier dramatics are way over her head and O'Shea's, rendering their relationship totally unbelievable. There's also the sequence at the skating pond with Chris and Don joking about how spousal abuse is good for a relationship that comes off as far more disturbing today. (Even in the movie, Buzz called them on it.)
The movie also features a surprising lack of ice skating for one of Henie's films. No one else has a number besides her or the chorus, and the only song with lyrics is heard briefly in the end. Don supposedly became a big skater in Buzz's shows, but we only hear his death-defying routines described. He's never shown doing them. The only time we see him on ice is during the hockey sequence in the opening.
The Big Finale: It's a Pleasure is no pleasure. It's too bad this slushy nonsense was Henie's only shot at a color movie. It's strictly for her most ardent fans, or fans of 40's and 50's Technicolor musicals.
Home Media: On DVD and streaming, the latter currently free on Amazon Prime with a subscription.
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