Neptune's Daughter

Once again, I've hit a period where there are multiple movies on my DVR that I haven't blogged about before but that are coming up soon on TCM, so you're going to get a bunch of such posts in quick succession. First up is Neptune's Daughter, which concludes a night of Ricardo Montalbán movies early tomorrow (October 15) morning at 4:00 AM.

Montalbán is the male lead here, although the star of the movie is Esther Williams. She plays Eve Barrett, a swimmer who wins a bunch of trophies in the days when you couldn't make money from a competitive sport like swimming since the International Olympic Committee highly frowned on that. So, needing to make money, Eve went into business designing swimsuits with Joe Backett (Keenan Wynn). Joe has a thing for Eve, but for her there's a business partnership and just a friendship.

Eve has a kid sister, Betty (Betty Garrett). Betty is man-hungry, so when news comes that a South American polo team is going to be visiting, Betty gets excited. Joe is excited by the idea of putting on an aquacade for the team and all the audience that will show up for the matches to make some money and serve as advertising for the swimwear company. Eve, however, is not excited, because she knows that poor Betty will go after the guys and possibly get herself in troube for it.

The star of the polo team is José O'Rourke (that's Montalbán, of course). He, being a performance athlete, gets a lot of the aches and pains that high-level athletes do, and needs a masseur. He gets on in Jack Spratt (Red Skelton), and gives Jack some advice on Latin lovers and that the reason Anglo women go for them is that apparently they find Spanish irresistible. José leaves, Betty walks in, and since Jack is practicing his Spanish, Betty immediately assumes this is José. As if Red Skelton could look even remotely Latin.

The real José shows up at Joe and Eve's factory, which gives Eve the chance to speak her piece to José, telling him to stop seeing Betty, even though he never has met Betty. So instead, José takes this as an opportunity to start putting the moves on Eve, who does after all look good in a swimsuit. Eve tries to rebuff José at first, but you know she's going to fall for him despite the mistaken identities that will need to be resolved.

And then out of nowhere the plot takes a ridiculous turn. Mac (Mike Mazurki) is a professional gambler who has a wager on the outcome of the big polo match, and figures the best way to hedge his bets is to try to waylay José, by less than legal means if necessary. This has an affect on both the José and Eve relationship, as well as on Jack, since of course with Red Skelton in the film you're going to get some of his physical comedy.

The plot of Neptune's Daughter is wafer-thin, but that's not the reason to watch the movie. The real reason is that all of the main leads are so appealing here in spite of the plot. Betty Garrett and Red Skelton get the better musical numbers, including one with Xavier Cugat. Among the songs is one that's now become a Christmas standard, "Baby It's Cold Outside", although Neptune's Daughter has nothing to do with Christmas. The song is also done twice, once with Esther Williams not able to stay and Montalbán telling her it's cold -- and a second time with the sex roles reversed, and Red Skelton feigning wanting to leave with Betty Garrett trying to convince him to stay. Also, all four of the characters have their eyes fully open about what they're doing. So this Christmas if anybody tries to claim that "Baby It's Cold Outside" is "problematic", tell them to go fuck themselves.

Rant aside, Neptune's Daughter is a decidedly entertaining movie, if one that's fairly mindless.