Song of the Islands

source: Song of the Islands

Song of the Islands

Apart from the fact that Victor Mature gets to act alongside of Thomas Mitchell, and the story is set in Hawaii, there is nothing to commend this film. Some of the Hawaiian characters are Americans made up to look Hawaiian. The characters are one-dimensional, and the story fails to engage the audience at any level. I'm not a Betty Grable fan, but she does look good in a straw skirt, and she has a nice back. The film is shot in beautiful Technicolor, but it is not a masterclass in colour grading. I would advise Mature fans to stay away from this film as it comes nowhere near the quality of 'Samson and Delilah'.

Not so much a comedy as an opportunity to show off Betty Grable's million-dollar gams, this stinker is rendered unwatchable largely upon the arrival of two idiots (played by Victor Mature and Jack Oakie) to a fictional Hawaiian island inhabited by rival white guys and a tribe of good-hearted natives. For some unfathomable reason Oakie is pursued by a native woman and her cannibalistic cohort, both of whom are man hungry, so to speak. The absurdity of Grable as having grown up on the island and thereby mastering the hula outweighs the genuinely Hawaiian musical interludes, and although it was filmed in color, most of the sea scenes are obviously movie sets.

Enjoyable 1942 film with Bette Grable and Victor Mature in Hawaii. Son of a wealthy scion, Mature falls for Grable while he is trying to get her father, a wonderful Thomas Mitchell, to sell his father, George Barbier, land. The relationship between the two elders is terrific of one of hostility then amiability until a fast working executive tries to evict Mitchell from the land for non-payment of taxes. Jack Oakie steals the show as Mature's sidekick. Hilo Hattie, as the Hawaiian woman who has designs on Oakie, belts out those Hawaiian songs and acts as a Jewish mother by constantly feeding Oakie. The songs of Hawaiian and American style are great and it's too bad that the film was just an hour and eighteen minutes.

Great 1940s World War II Pacific island fantasy movie. The colors are so bright they almost can't be real. Victor Mature and Jack Oakie head to an island where Betty Grable lives in tropic splendor with her father (Thomas Mitchell - Gerald O'Hara from "Gone With The Wind", same Irish accent too by the way...). The music is just fantastic, Harry Owens and his orchestra are incredible, the classic Hula Comedienne Hilo Hattie is on hand as Palola to provide comic relief in her attempts to land Jack Oakie (Jack is afraid of Palola's Cannibal uncle however...). Gloriously non-politically correct in the way that only classic movies can be. Betty Grable in a grass skirt, (wow!) no wonder all the G. I. s you speak to from that time were crazy about her!