Starring Bob Hope, Betty Hutton, Eve Arden, and ZaSu Pitts
Directed by Sidney Lanfield
Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter and others
Let's celebrate the upcoming Memorial Day weekend with the last of the four comedies Bob Hope did set in the military. On Broadway in 1941, Let's Face It was a farce with Cole Porter songs that made stars out of Danny Kaye as one of three soldiers who are hired by bored wealthy women to escort them and Eve Arden as the most prominent of those women. It was a surprise hit despite less-than-stellar reviews that didn't consider it to be one of Porter's better scores. How does it look nowadays? Let's begin, not at the barracks, but at a dairy farm that is also a health spa for overweight women and find out...
The Story: Winnie Porter (Hutton) is getting tired of her fiancee, Private Jerry Walker (Hope) ducking out of getting married. On the day they're supposed to finally tie the knot, Winnie catches Jerry selling junk food to her clients, and the Army catches him when he accidentally drives a Jeep through a wall. Desperate to pay off the Jeep, he convinces his friends Barney (Dave Willock) and Frankie (Cully Richards) to join him in arranging dates for wealthy Maggie Watson (Arden) and her friends Cornelia Figeston (Pitts) and Nancy Collister (Phyllis Povah). The ladies are tired of their husbands going off on "fishing trips" and leaving them alone. Furious when they catch them with the women, Winnie and Frankie and Barney's girlfriends Muriel (Dona Drake) and Jean (Marjorie Weaver) take the ladies' husbands out on dates at the same nightclub. Unfortunately, the boys' superior officer Sergeant Wiggins (Joe Sawyer) is also out on the town. When he catches them, it sends the boys fleeing again.
The Song and Dance: Though Hope and Hutton both have some good moments, Arden and the older ladies are the ones who really steal the show. They get all the best lines and have some of the best moments, including when their husbands catch them with the soldiers! Hope does get a few moments of his own to shine, notably in the beginning when he's trying to hustle the ladies with the sweets and the end when the guys are fleeing the entire mess.
The Numbers: We open with "The Milk Song" as Winnie leads ladies of all shapes and sizes in an exercise class. Winnie and Jerry say "Who Did? I Did? Yes I Did!" as they sing along to an album Winnie made and Jerry tries to show off on Winnie's exercise equipment. "Let's Face It" is the sole chorus number as the Army soldiers sing about the presents their girlfriends sent them. "Who Did?" is heard later as an instrumental dance number for the trio of soldiers as they literally stick together to keep the overly amorous older ladies at bay and as they finally do dance with the women. When we get to the nightclub, two dancers do an instrumental routine that seemed to mainly involve variations on the woman smacking the man. Winnie gives her own option on romance as she insists "Let's Not Talk About Love."
Trivia: Jules Styne and Sammy Cahn wrote "Who Did? I Did! Yes I Did!"
Let's Face It debuted on Broadway in 1941 with Kaye in Hope's role singing two patter numbers written by his wife Sylvia Fine in addition to Porter's songs. As mentioned, it was a surprise hit, running two years in New York and a year in London in 1943. It pretty much disappeared after the London run, other than a TV version in 1954 with Bert Lahr and Gene Nelson as the soldiers and Vivian Vance in Eve Arden's role.
What I Don't Like: No matter who wrote the music, this isn't really much of a musical. I really wish they'd kept more of the Cole Porter score, even if it wasn't one of his best. It might have fleshed out more of the characters. We barely see Winnie other than her numbers, and Jerry's buddies and their girls are fairly interchangeable.
The Big Finale: Mainly for really big fans of Hope, Arden, Porter, or small-scale 40's musicals.
Home Media: Which makes it just as well that the only places you can currently find this are on YouTube and the Internet Archive.
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