Maisie Goes to Reno (1944)

Too much of everything

the audience applauded

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Director: HARRY BEAUMONT. Screenplay: Mary C. McCall Jr. Story: Harry Ruby and James O'Hanlon. Based on the character created by Wilson Collison. Uncredited screenplay contributors: Harry Clork, Howard Emmett Rogers. Photography: Robert Planck. Film editor: Frank E. Hull. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons, Howard Campbell. Set decorators: Edwin B. Willis, Helen Conway. Music: David Snell. Songs by Ralph Freed and Sammy Fain. "Panhandle Pete" number choreographed by Sammy Lee. Additional photography: William Daniels. Unit manager: Hugh Boswell. Assistant director: Charles O'Malley. Sound supervisor: Douglas Shearer. Western Electric Sound System. Producer: George Haight.Copyright 20 July 1944 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at Loew's State: 28 September 1944. U.S. release: September 1944. U.K. release: November-December 1944. Australian release: 22 February 1945. 9 reels. 8,069 feet. 90 minutes. U.K. release title: YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO ME.SYNOPSIS: Maisie goes to Reno? Before seeing the picture, we presumed she was dying to get a divorce from the schnook she married in Ringside Maisie. No? What's she doing in Reno, then? Oh, I see. She's taking a well-earned rest from that super-boring airplane factory job featured in Swing Shift Maisie.NOTES: The 8th of the nine Maisie pictures. COMMENT: Needless to say, this entry, the best of the Maisie pictures was also one of the least popular with audiences. The cast is great. John Hodiak who had a small role in the previous entry has a different part in this one, but it's the lead. Hodiak was always one of my favorite actors. Rejected by the armed services because of the hypertension that eventually led to his fatal heart attack, Hodiak always invested his performances with an appealing intensity. A sort of middle-class equivalent of John Garfield's firmly working- class protagonist, Hodiak always gave the impression of playing on the edge. He always invested his characters with depth — no matter how superficially they may have been written. And of course there's Ava Gardner, definitely Hollywood's top siren as far as I'm concerned. You can keep your blonde pin-up girls. Ava Gardner, like Simone Simon and Ingrid Bergman, always projected class, with a capital "C". Admittedly, her role is small, but vital. She plays it with total conviction and looks most attractive too. (Maybe William Daniels photographed her scenes?)I could go through the rest of the cast, ticking through the performers one by one, but I'll content myself with praising Byron Foulger. Always a number one character player with me since I first caught him as Professor Henderson in the Universal serial, "The Master Key". In fact for years, not knowing his real name, I used to call him, Professor Henderson. Here Foulger gives us a comic near- sighted psychiatrist, a delicious impersonation that raises more laughs in ten minutes than Miss Sothern contrives in the entire picture. As for the director, Harry Beaumont, a neglected master if ever there was one. You don't agree with me? I appeal to Orson Welles. Isn't Harry Beaumont one of the greatest? Orson fidgets. He knows what I'm getting at. But he's eventually forced to admit that he greatly admired Beaumont's handling of the courtroom scene in this movie. So much so that he imitated it, throwing in a few more tricks for "The Lady from Shanghai".But these are not the only terrific moments in Maisie Goes to Reno. With a plot fashioned by Harry "Three Little Words" Ruby and James "Calamity Jane" O'Hanlon, we know to expect the delightfully unexpected. For instance, what about that running gag with the little black dog? And what about the delightful "Panhandle Pete" number? And how about the usually meek Donald Meek as a wonderfully grouchy manager with no warmth in his testy heart at all?Production values with their big crowd scenes at the bus depot, the hotel and the court-room are mighty impressive. Only Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer could dress up a "B" movie with such style and finesse.

The first third of this movie was irritating, the second third was mildly amusing, and the final third was downright tedious.I didn't even find the premise to be plausible, in that this to-be divorcée was allowing her secretary to run her life for her. Rich people live in a different world. They are accustomed to telling people what to do, not to having people tell them what to do.Possible spoiler to follow: I also didn't buy the cliché about how easily people assume that someone is mentally unbalanced. Just because someone believes there is a plot afoot, does not automatically mean they are a mental case. It's not like no one has ever plotted against anyone for financial gain.I didn't enjoy this movie. I ought to have heeded the other reviews. I wish I had skipped it.

Maisie Goes To Reno finds Ann Sothern initially being Rosie the Riveteer at a defense plant. But when she starts getting snappish with her fellow workers and develops a nervous wink that other people throughout the film keep misinterpreting she gets on doctor's order a two week paid vacation in Reno. Salary and a chance to sing at night with Chick Chandler's Orchestra at one of the casinos.Right there was a problem and I'm sure audiences must have vigorously scratched their heads and wondered how they could get to work in Maisie's factory. Some doctor might have prescribed a rest period, but a vacation with salary, that was just plain ridiculous for all the Rosies in the audience.But on the way she gets involved with a young soldier Tom Drake who is on his way to Reno to divorce his wife. However Drake gets orders to go to his new camp and his leave is canceled. He gives Sothern a letter to deliver to the wife pleading for a second chance. Maisie does as she's asked, but when she delivers the letter to Marta Linden she soon after smells a rat. In fact there are three rats in the picture. But no one wants to believe her. All I can say is that Paul Cavanaugh, Linden, and Bernard Nedell have a very interesting scheme afoot.John Hodiak is also in the film, but he's thoroughly wasted in the part of a casino croupier who befriends Sothern. He was an up and coming player just as Tom Drake was with MGM at the time. Neither had the career of top stardom although both later turned in some really good performances.However this was a film that also showcased Ava Gardner whose role I won't mention because that would give things away. She and Ann Sothern singing a nice rendition of Panhandle Pete are the best things that Maisie Goes To Reno has going.

This middling entry in MGM's answer to Warner's Torchy Blaine series has Maisie going to Reno, getting involved in a mystery surrounding a divorcing couple.It is a rather dull entry, the result of an uninvolving script and bland characterizations. Harry Beaumont, one of MGM's longtime B directors, does his best with the visual story telling, but even Anne Southern, aided and abetted by some up-and-coming players like Ava Gardner and John Hodiak can't do much with the story but talk fast.MGM, once Thalberg was dead, never quite knew what to do with unglamorous characters and a smattering of 40s jive talk dates the story and gives an infantile air to the entire operation. For completest of the talent involved, but if you miss this, you won't suffer.