This Time for Keeps (1947)

I recently have watched about a dozen Esther Williams movies. Some were quite good and most were pretty watchable despite the silly plots. However, I must say that of all the ones I've seen, this one is by far the worst. I think that unless you are the sort of person who wants to see all of her movies, this one is imminently skippable.The film stars Williams as, what else, Nora, an underwater performer. She falls in love (though we know no reason why) with a very dull man named Dick Johnson (I am NOT making that up)--played by Johnny Johnston. However, in a subplot stolen right from "The Jazz Singer", Dick's father is very controlling and expects the young man to not only be an opera singer like himself but also marry the woman HE has picked out for the son! Not surprisingly, the father's actions created serious misunderstandings and nearly break up Nora and Dick. But the problem is Nora really, really loves Dick. Can her love of Dick triumph in the end? The weakest link in the film is Johnston. While his voice is magnificent, he had as much charisma as a piece of moldy cheese...no,...perhaps less. Looking so plain and possessing very little personality, you have no idea why Nora loves this guy so much. As for me, after a while I really didn't care. Overall, a very simple plot that is too much like "The Jazz Singer" and with a leading man who makes paste seem exciting.By the way, the underwater ballet scene near the beginning is among Esther's most famous. Yet, as you watch it you'll probably rightfully wonder how the audience who was supposedly watching it could possibly even see these tricks! Think about it--from the stage in the movie, all they could see (barely) is the top of the water!!

This film is an enigma because, while it is a properly light-hearted musical (but weren't they all), it also boasts a great many oddities- starting with the strange title (exactly what in the film is "for keeps?"). Esther Williams plays a properly likable, properly beautiful, water ballerina whose relationship with Jimmy Durante (a legend whom I've always enjoyed) should have been that of a father and daughter, but instead is something a tad stranger. Thankfully, this isn't ignored in the film, as her actual love interest (Johnnie Johnston), whom Durante relentlessly 'protects' from Williams, challenges his interference in the film's 11th hour. (While Durante seems to have a bothered conscience about this, it is never confirmed or denied.) Co-starring with Williams and Durante is the very genteel and old-school tenor Lauritz Melchior as Johnston's meddlesome (and somewhat annoying) father. The musical numbers are delightful, if a tad uneven in quality. I wasn't particularly fond of Durante's "Lost Chord" routine, but it appears to be legendary with most listeners. I prefer Johnston's "Easy To Love," the various Xavier Cugat pieces, and most of all, the provocative striptease and swim of "Ten Percent Off."

The movie tells a simple, light-hearted love story between Leonora Cambaretti (Esther Williams), the leading swimmer in a water ballet show, and Ferdi Farro (Jimmy Durante), a singer who just returned from World War II. The plot is rather straight, without serious complications, harmless, sometimes naive, insubstantial. But within its limited scope it is well done and enjoyable.As this is a musical movie, there is singing, dancing, and -- most remarkable -- the water ballet. The different numbers include some charming scenes. But you cannot compare the dancing with the wonderful performances that are known, for example, from Fred Astaire movies. Also the singing numbers do not reach the quality that is present, for instance, in "My Dream Is Yours" (with Doris Day as a singer), a movie that was produced at about the same time with a similar, though slightly more ambitious entertainment scope.

What better entertainment. Once again, Esther Williams proves she's the queen of the MGM swimming spectacles. In glorious technicolor and looking like the dish she is, Miss Williams gives a delightful frothy performance. Her water scenes are very glamorous with underwater swimming scenes that take your breath away [kidding aside]. Add to this the comedic and charming Jimmy Durante who's a sort of fatherly type looking out for his swimming star. He too does some swimming, if you can believe it. The love interest in this flick is not one of the MGM stable studs you usually see [Van Johnson, Howard Keel or Fernando Lamas] but a pop singer of the times, Johnny Johnston, who has little film to his credit. He sings well, looks like a decent enough guy, but just doesn't have the stuff leading men are made of. A pleasant performance but not strong enough to allure the mermaid out of the water tank. Then there's Dame May Whitty, one of England's and MGM's stronger character women [remember her in Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES?] playing Esther's grandmother who once was a famous bareback rider in the circus, if you can believe it. And Lauritz Melchoir, the opera singer, who MGM was trying to make their newest singing star, playing the boy's papa. Not likely. More like grandpapa. But listen, for pure entertainment, silly plot and oh, those glorious swimming scenes and Esther Williams in gold lame bathing suits, who cares? Look for Richard Simmons in the rejected suitor scenes. He is always turning up in this type of role in most of the MGM musicals as boy friend, producer or whatever. Same type of role in ON AN ISLAND WITH YOU, another Williams musical, this time with Peter Lawford and Ricardo Montalban as her suitors. And round and round we go. But don't stop, Esther, you are a living doll, wet or dry.