''The Heat's On'' (1943) is a musical movie starring

Mae West Mary Jane "Mae" West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned more than seven decades. Recognized as a prominent sex symbol of her time, she was known ...

, William Gaxton, and Victor Moore, and released by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...

Plot

Broadway star Fay Lawrence is a temperamental diva who is reluctantly persuaded by a Broadway producer to star in his latest production.

Cast

as Fay Lawrence * Victor Moore as Hubert Bainbridge * William Gaxton as Tony Ferris * Lester Allen as Mouse Beller *

Alan Dinehart Mason Alan Dinehart Sr. (born Harold Alan Dinehart; October 3, 1889 – July 18, 1944) was an American actor, director, writer, and stage manager. Biography Dinehart initially studied to be a priest, but he turned to the theater instead. ...

as Forrest Stanton * Mary Roche as Janey Adair *

Lloyd Bridges Lloyd Vernet Bridges Jr. (January 15, 1913 – March 10, 1998) was an American film, stage and television actor who starred in a number of television series and appeared in more than 150 feature films. He was the father of four children, includi ...

as Andy Walker * Almira Sessions as Hannah Bainbridge * Jack Owens as Himself *

Hazel Scott Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidadian jazz and classical pianist and singer. An outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation, she used her influence to improve the representation of Black America ...

as Herself * Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra as Themselves * Edward Earle as Writer (uncredited)

Production background

Mae West was 49 at the time of the movie's production, her first film in three years, after an interlude starring on Broadway. Unlike her previous films, for which West wrote the screenplays and/or story material, West played no part in creating the story or dialogue of ''The Heat's On''. Perhaps as a result, the movie was not a box office success. West did not return to the screen until 27 years later in '' Myra Breckinridge'' (1970), and chose to pursue a successful career in theater instead.

Critical response

In '' The Nation'' in 1943, critic

James Agee James Rufus Agee ( ; November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for ''Time'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autob ...

wrote that the picture is a "stale-ale musical in which a lot of good people apathetically support the almost equally apathetic Mae West... Mae West is mainly as good as ever, which is still plenty good enough for me; but evidently she and her colleagues feel that too few people agree with me."

Leonard Maltin Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic, film historian, and author. He is known for his book of film capsule reviews, '' Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide'', published from 1969 to 2014. Maltin was the film criti ...

declared, "Befuddled Moore and colorful Cugat are fun, but there isn't enough of West in this film; when she's on-screen, she's just as funny as ever."

References

External links

* * * 1943 films 1940s musical drama films American black-and-white films Columbia Pictures films Films directed by Gregory Ratoff American musical drama films 1943 drama films 1940s English-language films 1940s American films English-language musical drama films {{musical-drama-film-stub