Texas Carnival (1951)

Delightful romp that blends the stars together in highly entertaining fashion. Red gets to mug it up in typical Skelton fashion, while studly Keel smooths in his baritone, and Miller taps her way into our hearts. Even mermaid Williams manages to get her fins on as well as show some acting chops. In fact, the highpoint in my little book is her almost eerie swim through the air in a fancy hotel room. In a flowing white gown she's like a ghostly aquanaut thanks to trick photography. That scene is going to stay with me, strange as it is.The plot, of course, is negligible--- carnival barker Red's mistaken for a Texas millionaire and has to act the part when he gets into trouble. I love it when Red and others talk about the great smell and feel of the Longhorn State while standing in front of a painted backdrop. In fact the production never leaves the San Fernando Valley, but who cares. Anyway, it's just the kind of material and headliners that big budget MGM knew how to package in great escapist fashion. And to think Maltin's Classic Movie Guide only gives it two stars out of four-was someone home asleep. Anyway, the Technicolor's lavish, the stars in top form, and the pacing doesn't dawdle. So catch up with it when you can, and remind Maltin to set his alarm.

That old silly plot device, mistaken identity, is utilized for this less than exciting MGM musical that tries to make us believe that two carnival performers can be confused for two rodeo star. Brother and sister Red Skelton and Esther Williams don't do anything to change the confusion since they get free room and board. With one of the rodeo performers (Howard Keel) actually there keeping their secret, all sorts of silly events occur. Throw in Ann Miller tapping, Keenan Wynn tossing out wisecracks and only one sequence with Williams swimming, and you see why I call this second-rate MGM. Miller's big number, "It's Dynamite", is more memorable for the fact that she dances on a xylophone than for the song itself. Skelton, sometimes too silly for today's taste, has one hysterically funny sequence trying to roll tobacco, but his rodeo stunt ride at the end is a repeat of things we've already seen, and not nearly as funny.Keel and Williams get the romance, but Keel's songs are forgettable. A rousing variation of "Deep in the Heart of Texas", also heard in the same year's "Rich, Young, and Pretty", is the musical highlight. A somewhat imaginative sequence where Keel fantasizes about Williams swimming in his hotel room makes you wonder if MGM had declared Chapter 11 this year because of the lack of spectacle usually associated with their musicals.

How to get ESTHER WILLIAMS wet and still have an entertaining musical must have finally gotten to whomever dreamed up this lackluster, shoddy script for the MGM swimming star. She seldom dips a toe into the water and when she does her swimming scenes are brief.In fact, the whole story is told in little more than one hour and seventeen minutes--and even then, it's exasperating to watch so little happen. The story is the tired old mistaken identity theme taken to ridiculous heights by RED SKELTON, who's mistaken for an obnoxious and wealthy oil baron (KEENAN WYNN) at a luxury hotel with a deluxe size swimming pool. HOWARD KEEL ambles into the story via horseback singing just one of several unmemorable songs and is soon ogling Esther poolside in a manner designed to get her to take a dip (for the sake of her fans).ANN MILLER pops up to add some breezy Texas charm to the proceedings, but even her lively dance numbers lack the usual splash MGM gave to its production numbers. Esther is supposed to be a carnival girl who gets dumped into water by any man who can throw a curve ball--and she's hungry, or so we're told, to the point where she faints in the arms of Howard Keel who then chases her until she's caught. Esther has to be one of the healthiest gals ever supposed to be suffering from malnutrition that I've ever seen.The hazy plot plods along until the predictable ending with the stolen identity cleared up and Esther is ready to melt into Keel's arms--none too soon.Summing up: At least Esther had MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID in her future--but this is one where she's just killing time. Very unworthy vehicle for the swimming star par excellence.

This brash and often noisy Technicolor trifle is definitely not for those expecting to enjoy a series of Esther's more elaborate water ballets. She spends a minimal amount of time in the water in this one and there's only one trademark production number, a dream sequence in which she floats sinuously about in Howard Keel's darkened hotel room, trailing yards of diaphanous white veiling, that comes close to what her fans might have lined up at the box-office hoping to enjoy.Esther, however, looks wondrously healthy and pretty throughout, the very picture of an All-American Girl, acting with her usual pert insouciance. Howard gets to unleash his rich bass-baritone in two or three forgettable songs, though he certainly looks convincing as a lanky ranch foreman. Red Skelton contributes his usual shtick, at some tedious length here and there, and even manages to amuse today's audiences with a skillfully executed pratfall or two. Ann Miller, ever the most energetic in the cast, seems to come out on top in this pastiche, tossing off a couple of her patented leg-tossing, tippy-tapping dance amazements, choreographed by the reliable Hermes Pan.M-G-M touted this as 'Another Big MGM Musical' but it appears to have been rather thriftily produced, with some minimal location work that looks notably cobbled together, especially in a concluding and very extended chuck wagon race, which involves some dangerously risky stunt work, by the way.Keenan Wynn lends some very sour support, as a Texas millionaire, overly fond of his bourbon. Skelton also is supposed to imbibe a prodigious amount in one drawn-out sequence, and we're meant to find it riotously funny, something that may have been acceptable back in the early 1950s but which fails to amuse as easily today, with our greater awareness of the very deleterious effects of excessive alcohol intake.It's also amusing to note how very much inflation has devalued the American dollar in the more than half-century since this film was released. A multi-room hotel suite large enough to fill one of M-G-M's average soundstages is quoted as costing what would be the usual price in today's dollars for a single, modest hotel room in a smaller U.S. city. A doctor makes a house call, to tend a briefly ailing Ms. Williams (She's fainted from hunger, poor thing!), for a fee that wouldn't cover the charge for administering an aspirin anywhere in a U. S. health facility today. A beautiful Lincoln Cosmopolitan convertible is smashed into a tree (mercifully, off-camera) and the quoted estimated tariff for its repairs (supposedly including a ruined dashboard) is so laughably minuscule that the total wouldn't cover a six months' insurance premium assessed for an ultra-safe contemporary driver with no traffic citations on his/her record over many prior years of accident-free mileage. What price progress?!?