The Strip (1951)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Overrated and overhyped

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Orson Welles once called Mickey Rooney the most talented person in Hollywood. The multi faceted Rooney could not only sing, act and dance but also played a variety of instruments. With Andy Hardy all grown up and his career on the rocks Rooney calls on his percussionist expertise to get his career beating again in The Strip.After being released from the hospital after the war Stanley Maxton heads for LA to get his career going again as a drummer. Getting into a car accident en-route he meets Sonny Johnson (James Craig ) a bookie who gives him a job taking bets. His desire is to drum though bring's him to Fluff's where he meets dancer/cigarette girl Jane (Sally Forrest) and takes on the job of the house drummer. Sonny visits the club and falls for Jane who in turn gravitates towards him and his abilities to further her career. When Sonny turns up dead Stanley is the prime suspect.Rooney looks amazingly adept and quite convincing behind the drum kit but his performance and the production itself isn't even worth a rim shot never mind a drum roll. Rooney is little more than Andy visits the land of vice with a handful of Louis Stone surrogates to guide him along the way. Rooney lacks the depth as an actor to bring any substance to Maxton. He is still the pining teen from the series. As fatale Sally Forrest is limber but her performance is timber.The film itself is a pasty noir where the technicians seemed to have forgotten to turn off some of the lights to exact mood and intent. It's more Dragnet than expressionist with the most interesting twists and dynamic, the relationship between Sonny and Jane ignored in favor of Mickey's brooding.The film's highlight albeit brief and truncated is the performing of Louis Armstrong's band at Fluff's with precious moments from trombonist Jack Teargarden and pianist Earl Fatha Hines giving excuse enough to avoid this stretch of bad road and turn on the Victrola to listen to these diamonds in the rough instead.

One of the dumber scripts around. The dramatic conclusion to the story takes place off screen and is merely described in a police report. (Girl shoots gangster dead for threatening her boyfriend [Rooney] gets killed herself in the fracas.Some good musical numbers--mainly Satchmo singing "A Kiss to Build a Dream On." Rooney and Demarest are actually both good being Rooney and Demarest.But as an L.A. period piece (released in '51) it's fun to see the Sunset strip and other locations. Particularly if you grew up around here. There are a lot of movies from that period, made on a low budget with crummy scripts. But fun to watch for their money-saving use of locations and for their natural noir ambience.

The murder/suspense plot is little more than a convenient set of bookends to showcase the post-adolescent Mickey Rooney, Sally Forest and a gathering of jazz greats (Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Vic Damone) in the setting of a Sunset Strip nightspot. James Craig isn't bad as the mustachioed "heavy" doting on his office foliage (after Dewey's defeat in '48, mustaches became quite unAmerican). This movie is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring, and only marginally "noir" by virtue of date, setting and plotline, but it's watchable -- the music and dance numbers are pretty good. Like a couple of other films ("The Man I Love;" "Love Me or Leave Me") it gives evidence that a new genre might have been in formation: the musical noir.

Dull, barely-film-noir story with Mickey Rooney as a nightclub drummer mixed up with some bad folks. Highlight of this film are the dance numbers featuring Sally Forrest (who plays the cigarette girl/Mickey's girl/featured nightclub dancer.) Sally very rarely got to dance on film so it's nice to see her though the numbers tend to play like auditions. Not as sexy as her dance segments in the colorful "Son of Sinbad" and "Excuse My Dust" films, but her performance is more in tune to her great film noir roles with Ida Lupino. Interesting hybrid of her dance talents and her film noir fame.