The Las Vegas Story (1952)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Fantastic!

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

A poor man's Casablanca but this movie is a messy hybrid of a murder mystery and musical romance.Howard Hughes continues with his obsession of Jane Russell who plays former Vegas crooner Linda. She has returned reluctantly to Vegas with her wealthy husband Lloyd Rollins (Vincent Price) wearing an expensive necklace and Lloyd with a need to gamble after receiving a startling telegram.Hot on the heels is an insurance man (Brad Dexter) following them and Linda meets up with her ex boyfriend (Victor Mature) who left to fight the war and is now working in Vegas as a detective which includes hanging around casinos and stopping under aged runaways from getting married.However Lloyd has accumulated gambling debts, the necklace has gone missing and the nasty casino owner ends up dead with Lloyd as the prime suspect.All this plus songs and tunes from Hoagy Carmichael playing the resident entertainer Happy. Even Linda finds time to join in for a song.A surprisingly decent acting display by Mature, Price is a scene stealer without camping it up and Russell effortlessly provides the beauty. The plot is too by the numbers and the musical songs range from tedious to bizarre with The Monkey Song.

Beautiful lounge singer Jane Russell (as Linda) returns to Las Vegas with gambling husband Vincent Price (as Lloyd Rollins), then gets involved with former boyfriend and local lieutenant Victor Mature (as Dave Andrews). Songwriter Hoagy Carmichael (as Happy) has no new hit for the film, but a couple of his oldies are utilized well. The stars seem bored by the script. However, there is some excitement as Ms. Russell is highly arousing in clothing that hugs many curves of her body. She sings "I Get Along Without You Very Well" (1939) and joins Mr. Carmichael for a couple of others. Later on, Carmichael wrote two tunes for Russell to sing in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953).**** The Las Vegas Story (1/1/52) Robert Stevenson ~ Jane Russell, Victor Mature, Vincent Price, Hoagy Carmichael

Apart from being another entry in my planned month-long tribute to Vincent Price, this also served as a nod to the recently-departed Jane Russell (as should be the upcoming MACAO from the same year, to be included in my other ongoing retrospective dedicated to Josef von Sternberg). Anyway, this is a minor noir effort: indeed, it is one of the sunnier of its type, in that the narrative unfolds as much by day as it does during the night; besides, for all its intended gloom, there is a healthy vein of humor running through it! It is saved, however, by the RKO production values (the studio, above any other, gave the genre its quintessential look) and the star cast (which also includes Victor Mature, Hoagy Carmichael, Brad Dexter and Jay C. Flippen).The plot involves Russell's return to the gambling capital of the world after she had spent the war years as a chanteuse there (at a club where Carmichael – who else? – is the typically laidback pianist/observer). In the meantime, she has married wealthy Price but does not know he is close to bankruptcy (before noticing a wire he received reporting the suicide of his Boston colleague)!; another old acquaintance is cop-on-the-beat Mature, bitter at her apparent desertion of him. Needless to say, Russell and Mature ultimately get to rekindle their affair, but the path runs far from smoothly: apart from their own mutual resentment, Price does not look favourably upon his wife's former conquests, while complicating things further is the expensive necklace Price uses as a guarantee in order to try his luck at one of the leading casinos (which is being closely watched by insurance investigator Dexter). Eventually, the new owner of Russell's old haunt is found murdered (after he had denied Price further credit) and the necklace stolen. Of course, Price becomes the key suspect – and Russell accuses Mature of having framed him so as to get back at her! However, it is obvious from the get-go that the real culprit is the wolfish Dexter, and the film climaxes decently with a desert helicopter chase and a shootout in an abandoned hangar. As for Price, he is ready to pay the price {sic} of his own criminal activity back home i.e. embezzlement.The film is reasonably enjoyable, with most of the expected noir elements intact – including its fair share of hard-boiled dialogue, not to mention having Russell and Carmichael warble a number of songs – but the contrived scripting (by Earl Felton and Harry Essex, who ought to have known better!), cornball attempts at comedy (mainly having to do with Sheriff Flippen betting what Mature's next move will be with respect to both solving the case and sorting out his private life!) and an incongruous sentimental streak (clearly evoking CASABLANCA {1942} in the subplot involving a couple of underage elopers!) prevent the promising mixture from rising to greater heights.

Substitute Victor Mature for the part that Robert Mitchum normally played in these RKO films of the Fifties and you've got The Las Vegas Story. Wonder what Mitch was doing at this time?Nothing terribly groundbreaking in this film. Jane Russell and Vincent Price arrive back in Las Vegas where Jane used to be a singer when she was a single gal. Also working there is ex-boyfriend Victor Mature now with the Clark County Sheriff. When casino owner Robert J. Wilke turns up dead, there's a host of suspects out there. Jane's diamond necklace also is missing which is seen quite reasonably as a motive as Price said it was in the hotel safe.Things pretty much go as they normally do in these noir films, some good action sequences a nice car chase through an atomic bomb testing site in the end.What sets The Las Vegas Story apart is the presence of that old music master Hoagy Carmichael. ANY film he either appears in and/or writes some songs for is a cut above average just for that. He and Russell end the film singing his Academy Award nominated song My Resistance Is Low.So will your's be once exposed to the talents of Hoagy Carmichael.