Those Redheads from Seattle (1953)

With Easter coming up I started looking round for films to watch with my dad over the holiday season.Taking a look at a DVD seller page,I spotted the first ever 3D Musical Western (!) ,which led to me getting ready to meet the redheads of Seattle.The plot:Running a campaign in his newspaper to get Johnny Kisco's salon shutdown, Vance Edmonds newspaper business gets burnt to the ground by Kisco's henchmen.Thanks to their being a gold rush in the area,Edmounds writes a letter to his family telling them to come down.Shortly after sending the letter,Vance is killed by Kisco's handyman (who have not been ordered by Kisco to burn the building,or kill Vance.) Getting the letter, Mrs. Edmonds gathers her daughters and sets off to the city to be reunited with her husband. Arriving in the city completely unaware,the Edmonds soon receive some bad news. View on the film:Whilst the transfer from 3D to 2D, (the 3D version was shown at the premiere,then never shown again,talk about value for money!)does slightly mute the colours,co-writer/(along with Daniel Mainwaring & George Worthing Yates) director Lewis R. Foster and cinematographer Lionel Lindon are able to find glitz in the redheads.Foster greets the girls in rosy blues and greens,whilst Lindon offers a glimpse to the 3D take with a depth of field which give the salons a touch of glamour,and the great snow covered mountain final a frosty atmosphere.Joined by sweet songs from Sidney Cutner and Leo Shuken,the screenplay by Foster/Mainwaring and Yates neatly blends the light Musical glaze with sawn-off shots from the Western.Entering the town all elegant,the writers rub the Musical girls against the outlaw,double-dealing world of the west,by wonderfully throwing their limelight dreams into the seedy smoke of the salons.Keeping the family in line, Agnes Moorehead gives a very good performance as the level-headed Mrs. Edmonds,whilst Gene Barry terrifically reveals Kisco trying to keep his outlaw life hidden,as Kisco's head is turned by the girls from Seattle.

In 1953, while so many good musicals, and not just at MGM, are integrating their scores, plots, and production designs, this Paramount oddity is a real throwback. All the songs, by a variety of hands, are "diegetic," i.e., stage-presentation numbers that have nothing to do with plot. Which may be just as well, since the plot is such a schizophrenic affair. It's about mom Agnes Moorehead (in an uncharacteristically humorless, uninteresting performance) squiring her four daughters to the Yukon in 1898, not aware that their dad has been murdered, and their falsely blaming saloon owner Gene Barry for it. The motivations are as scattershot as the intended 3D effects; when prettiest daughter Rhonda Fleming ends up with Barry, Moorehead glows with delight, even though she's hated him for most of the movie, because, well, it's time for fadeout and we need a happy ending. Teresa Brewer, with the best songs, is spunky and appealing, and Guy Mitchell, with a lovely voice, is more effective than he was the following year in another odd Paramount musical, "Red Garters." The tone's now-somber, now-boisterous, and the western and musical motifs do not blend well.

The freedom of the press is in jeopardy and it takes a hot-blooded redhead to preserve it. She is Rhonda Fleming, the daughter of a murdered newspaper man up in the Klondike. Along with her mother and three sisters (as well as a pregnant cat named President McKinley), they travel up north from Seattle into the Canadian wilds and face the horrifying truth about the corruption there. Blaming the wrong man for murder (as he owns the sinful saloon her father was writing about), Fleming prints a series of exposes and accusations when the accused (Gene Barry) tries to clear his name. Of course, the two also happen to be in love, and this leads to further complications.While nicely filmed in Technicolor, this musical lacks in humor, and has only a few rather mediocre musical numbers, generic in tone, and ultimately forgettable. One saloon number, though, is interestingly staged, utilizing only the gloved hands and tight-covered legs for the chorus girls as Teresa Brewer sings the sultry song "Baby Love Me Do". Resembling a slightly more feminine Ethel Merman, she is supposed to be the stereotypical saloon singer with proverbial heart of gold hidden by wisecracks (think Angela Lansbury in "The Harvey Girls") but her character isn't really well developed, at least personality wise.Agnes Moorehead is appropriately strict but loving as the mother of the four girls, all redheads except one. There's an exciting final where the villain is exposed but unfortunately even with different themes than most musicals, the results are rather standard.

I really like this movie. It is a good story & has a great cast.Theresa Brewer has a wonderful voice and I have always liked Agnes Moorehead. All the girls & the mother have red hair except the youngest & she is a blond. The husband/father was killed & they went to Alaska to settle his affairs. He ran the local newspaper & he wrote an item about the local saloon. One of his men killed the father. They find that there is no money. They are in Alaska, totally broke so they all find ways to earn money. Even the youngest sells kittens to help. It is a wonderful musical.There's the bad guys & the good guys. And each of the girls end up with someone. But Gene Barry plays a bad/good guy.