Two Latins from Manhattan (1941) User Reviews

Joan Davis in Charge

[drednm · 27 February 2016]

Odd little comedy with Joan Davis in charge of publicity for a nightclub. She rooms with two women (Jinx Falkenburg and Joan Woodbury) who have a singing act that's going no place. After Davis books an act from Cuba and the act disappears at the airport, she substitutes her two friends as the Cubans. They fake their way through bad accents and a few songs and are a hit. But things go awry when the two Cubans reappear with the Feds on their tail because they entered the country illegally. What will happen to Falkenburg and Woodbury? How will Davis square it with her boss? Fast-paced little B comedy with a couple good songs. The 3 women stars are all good. Co-stars include Lloyd Bridges as the displaced boyfriend, Don Beddoe as the nightclub owner, Fortunio Bonanova as a fellow Cuban, Antonio Moreno, Eddie Kane, and Sig Arno. Bruce Bennett shows up as a Fed.

Odd that Joan Davis doesn't get a number.

Latin fever strikes a "B".

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 20 August 2018]

One of the issues in seeing old movies years later is studying the work of various performers out of sequence as their movies become available. Such is the woe of this for me, having seen the Joan Davis/Jinx Falkenburg musical "Two Senoritas From Chicago" (1943) many years ago and seeing it again recently. The plot of these two "B" Columbia musicals are virtually the same, as are two the stars, with down on their luck brunette Anglo stars Falkenburg and Joan Woodbury, pretending to be Cuban because their all American singing act is considered ordinary. Their desperation for finding work in show business even has them breaking into a warehouse to return clothes they borrowed from the brother of a fashion house, causing them to get arrested. When friends of the singing team whose name they are using show up, they become victims of blackmail, further complicated when the real singing team shows up. In "Two Senoritas From Chicago", virtually the only difference has the girls being blackmailed by chorus girl rivals after stealing a script of a show they found and having Davis produce it. This film has Falkenburg and Woodbury going in and out of accent as they proclaim their loyalty to America after they become successes, oh so patriotic for pre-wartime, and boy, is it ever patronizing. The songs are not really memorable, but Davis is very funny. Somewhere in this minor musical is a very young Lloyd Bridges, but I was unable to recognize him.