The Revolt of Mamie Stover

The life of a materialistic prostitute during world war 2. The amazonian JANE RUSSELL owns the role and fills up the screen with her fleshy body. She is such a regal woman with a beguiling smile that promises many intimacies, but also masks an innate cruelty. She could drive a man insane. She is courted by a writer-soldier who is a moral melting pot i.e he cheats on his wife with the prostitute and waxes eloquent about it. The hawaian locales are stunning. The film starts off on a ship on which the main couple meets. (7/10)

"The Revolt of Mamie Stover" is a sort of jazzy noir piece set in Hawaii during World War 2. It provides a somewhat bleak but perhaps not unfounded look at the world. The men all crave female attention and companionship and are more than willing to pay for it, or at least for a facsimile of it. And the woman all seek money and success and are willing to degrade themselves in order to get it. In this milieu when true love is possibly found it is squashed and squandered due to irreconcilable differences, ingrained prejudices and lack of trust. A sad story really, but colorfully told, though not too explicitly. I rate this film a 4/10, not a must see, really just for Jane Russell fans.

Rather like her one-time co-star Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, it seemed to me, was often put to work in racy movies requiring her to be sexy and regularly disrobe. So it is here in Raoul Walsh's lurid melodrama set in Honolulu right at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack by the Japanese. How her title character got there is via San Francisco where her thinly-disguised call-girl activities attract a police ban and set her on a boat trip to Hawaii, on board which she encounters fellow-passenger Richard Egan, a successful writer. They have a fling and Egan's Jim Blair lends her some money until she gets started. Soon afterwards he learns she's effectively a prostitute and she that he's engaged raptor another woman, As their relationship ebbs and flows, the bombing takes place unsurprisingly causing a major panic and the film ends up with one of those cop-out endings which looks suspiciously like it was dreamed up in response to exit-cards handed out to preview audiences. Russell has to pretty much carry the whole film by herself and is rarely off screen. Indeed director Walsh sets the up the whole movie in the first shot when he sets her up walking away from the camera before abruptly turning around and facing down the viewer. She gets strong support from a blonde Agnes Moorhead as the brothel's tough-minded madam and Michael Pate as Moorhead's sadistic enforcer, just as happy bullying women as knocking out non-paying clients. I also thought that Egan did well in a tricky part as the principled writer-turned-soldier torn between his attraction for his clean-living society girl-friend and Russell's more carnal charms. For me the story took a lot of believing and I had an especially hard time accepting the depicted durability of Russell and Egan's affair, but filmed in rich Deluxe colour and making good use of location shooting, this almost proto-feminist movie on adult subject matter, for all its compromises within its storyline and characters, was another of those contemporary Hollywood films pushing the envelope right under the censor's nose.

Jane Russell is blindingly magnificent as always, but the one who actually steals the show is Agnes Moorehead as her employer in a Hawaiian night club in Honolulu, an establishment for lovely girls to entertain American soldiers but very strict on rules and morals. Jane Russell gradually advances into a leading position, as the incident of 7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbour breaks out. Jane Russell makes a very interesting character here, being thrown out of San Francisco as an undesirable prostitute (probably being too successful) and settling for a new life in Honolulu just in time for Pearl Harbour. A soldier finds her, and there is a passionate relationship - this is a very romantic film. However, his condition is that she leaves the establishment, while Agnes Moorehead persuades her to stay on and not let the soldier know. Of course he gets to know about it, and the obligatory crisis follows. Nevertheless, the conclusion is rather satisfactory. It's a colourful fireworks etertainment with romance and war and Jane Russell as the irresistible scandal beauty making the world go around. The music by Hugo Friedhofer is terrific, maybe his best, and adds a consistent enjoyable flavour and perfume to the film, which gets more and more fascinating as the plot with its complications rolls on. Jane Russell's beauty is something that just has to be irresistible to anyone - maybe especially if she plays a tramp.

Jane Russell may be famous for singing in musical comedies, but she did get her start in a drama, and with The Revolt of Mamie Stover, she reminds the audience she's able to hold her own in that genre. She starts the movie literally getting escorted out of town by the police, forced to leave San Francisco because "her kind" is causing too much trouble. With the censorship board still in full force in 1956, it's amazing such a blatant show of prostitution made it into the movie. Jane hops a boat to Honolulu, and it isn't long before she gets a job as a "hostess" in a dance club, run by the tough Agnes Moorehead. Part of what I really liked about this movie was the lack of the "hooker with a heart of gold" theme in Jane's character, or in any of the other girls in the club. Jane's primary motivation is money so she can return to her hometown and show everyone she made good, and she doesn't care how she earns it. Even when Richard Egan falls for her and asks her to give up her job, she can't do it. Jane has caught too many bad breaks to trust one man to make everything alright. She may make shrewd decisions, but you understand why she makes them. If you liked From Here to Eternity, you'll love The Revolt of Mamie Stover. It's got nice music from Hugo Friedhofer, a solid performance from the beautiful Jane Russell, and plenty of scenes that show off her legs. The romance isn't exactly traditional, but it's sweet in its own way and just might cause a lump in your throat. Give it a watch!

It's World War II Honolulu and good time girl Jane Russell has just arrived there after being kicked out by the vice squad from San Francisco. So you know she's not there to learn how to do the hula unless it means getting a large bank account to go with it. Russell fills out the screen once again in glorious Technicolor and cinemascope, playing a character who find true love with an army officer (Richard Egan) what can't resist the profits that come with an increased revenue at Agnes Moorehead's not quite so clean canteen. Egan even gives up good girl Joan Leslie for him and when he leaves for military duty it is with the promise that she will be faithful while waiting for him. but as Morehead realizes how invaluable Russell is, she increases Russell's profits to basically where Morehead isn't getting any profit from Russell's presence. This had the potential to knock em' all out of the park with its innuendos that could not pass the censorship. Of course the book on which this was based was a lot more racy, and Russell really isn't shown doing anything outside of the ordinary flirtation and performing a seductive musical number. Russell of course is the majority of the whole show, but Egan is a handsome and graceful leading man. Leslie is wasted in a superficial role and other than a few good scenes, Moorehead doesn't really have anything juicy to do outside of her firing strict assistant Michael Pate who attempts to dominate all of the girls, especially Russell who cannot be controlled. An uncomfortable moment for Morehead occurs when she stops page from telling her how ugly she is, rich in the. Of just a moment says a lot more about Moorehead's character than the script allows her to show. She is of course commanding in the scene where she reveals her past story to Russell as a way of keeping her working for her, and unlike what the nasty Pate says, Moorehead is far from ugly even if it is obvious that her character is a very unhappy female. The ending is rather Bittersweet, reminding me of the beginning and the end of the movie version of "Pal Joey", released just the following year. Russell does get some moments to show who this character is underneath all her hardness and in her one musical number, shows exactly why Mamie Stover could have indeed been the most popular pin-up girl in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. That scene alone is very tense as the people in the surrounding area can hear the bombing occur and think at first it's some type of drill until the news tells them otherwise. this is a film that has a lot going for it but ultimately is nothing more than glorified, glamorous trash, tied up in a pretty ribbon, but when it is opened, revealing something that's no sensible member of the audience probably didn't realize anyway.

Although this movie was changed before it's initial release, the intent remains. Jane give a subtle performance full of nuance as Mamie. Although, the movie is often shown on the FXM channel, it's in a standard, non-widescreen version. As of this writing, (March 2018), plans are to release this gem of a movie on blu-ray sometime later this year!. Because of censorship, the the original story point of Mamie being a prostitute servicing the military men who visit the brothel she works at has been changed to Mamie chatting with customers in the "champagne room" at a "dance hall." Modern audience will figure it out. But the real story line is Mamie trying to find a place in high-society by obtaining her own wealth without the help a man, is the focus. This ambition costs her respectability among the self-righteous society in Honolulu and it may even cost her the love of her life. Jane is great and their is real heat between her and Richard Egan. Agnes Moorehead appears as the Madame of the brothel Jane works at, is wonderful plus to this movie as she is to any movie she appeared in. Check it out!

If The Revolt Of Mamie Stover had been done at Columbia Pictures Harry Cohn would have made this the big budget film of the year and had Rita Hayworth doing it. As it was 20th Century Fox had Susan Hayward under contract and I'll bet this was offered to her first. With her tresses a flaming Arlene Dahl red, Jane Russell plays the title role in this film. She's a working girl who's been kicked out of San Francisco for her notoriety. But Jane's heard of job opportunities in Honolulu working in another den of iniquity run by Agnes Moorehead with Michael Pate as her enforcer. She also meets on the tramp freighter she's traveling on Richard Egan with whom it's on and off for the next few years from before World War II and after. Jane's smart about money though and she saved her's and invested it in picking up cheap real estate from people leaving Hawaii after Pearl Harbor. She's rich post war, but hardly respectable. It's what she craves most, respectability as she tells Egan about her white trash background from Mississippi. Funny that Russell doesn't have the slightest trace of southern accent or even attempts one. Russell is good in the title role, but the plot really doesn't go anywhere. I can't begin to fathom what Richard Egan's character is all about the script is unintelligible where he's concerned. And the story has a sudden death ending that leaves you hanging. Not her best film, but it does have some nice Hawaiian numbers one of which Bing Crosby recorded for a Hawaiian album he did, Keep Your Eyes On The Hands.

The double standard is still rampant, the character of Mamie Stover makes an attempt to achieve material success in a man's world. Richard Egan is believable as the writer with a house on a hilltop, and all the accoutrement Mamie Stover will beg borrow or steal to get. She does make a point when she says when he discusses money he ..."is only slumming, while I'm just plain scared"... The problem in these days is women were not encouraged to use their minds, and her pronounced figure is blatantly used in many scenes to underline this point. Some good scenes with Agnes Moorehead as brothel owner, and lush sets on the beaches and mountains of Oahu. Worth a viewing as a commentary on women's issues at the time, a curiosity in that one wonders how close the Stover character was to Russel's own life, and what she had to do to get ahead in Hollywood of the 1940's-1950's.

Producer: Buddy Adler. Copyright 1956 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Capitol: 11 May 1956. U.S. release: April 1956. U.K. release: 17 September 1956. Australian release: 12 July 1956. Sydney opening at the Regent. 92½ minutes. (Cut to 86 minutes in the UK). SYNOPSIS: The distilled screenplay, set in 1941, has Jane being escorted by the San Francisco police to the entrance galley of a ship leaving town. She is advised not to return — ever! Aboard the Hawaii-bound vessel, she chances upon a clean-cut science fiction writer. NOTES: Thanks to the popularity of both Jane Russell and CinemaScope (and also the fact that the novel was banned in some areas), "Mamie Stover" took reasonable money. COMMENT: Dreary. Miss Russell is rather garishly photographed. And Mr. Egan, as usual, is a dead loss. It's hard to believe that this bland piece of stodge was directed by Raoul Walsh whose once great artistic talents seem to have not survived at this point in his career. What is also hard to credit is that the tedious bore of a script was written by Sydney Boehm. I was going to sum up right here by saying that, aside from Agnes Moorehead's caustic study of the brothel madam, "The Revolt of Mamie Stover" had absolutely nothing to recommend it; but I now find that the ever-reliable "Monthly Film Bulletin" has anticipated me. OTHER VIEWS: There is little to recommend in this piece of unabashed hokum. — Monthly Film Bulletin.