The Heat's On

Back in the spring of 2025, Mae West was honored as TCM's Star of the Month, even though she didn't make all that many movies. I didn't have much to record, in part because of a box set of hers that I have that has a lot of her stuff from Paramount and TCM's not showing her two 1970s movies. However, before decamping from Hollywood, West made one film at Columbia that was part of the salute: The Heat's On.

Mae West plays Fay Lawrence, the sort of Broadway star loosely based on West herself: for the grown-up audience, but doing the sort of show that some of the more prudish types would consider controversial. With changing times and it being World War II, however, the new show for producer Tony Ferris (William Gaxton) has been a box office flop, and Fay is thinkng of using a clause in the contract to get out of the show so she can do something with rival producer Forrest Stanton (Alan Dinehart) instead. Fay, frankly, is sick of Ferris and his bend-the-rules ways.

Wanting to see Ferris after the show is Hubert Bainbridge (Victor Moore). He works in the supply department of the Bainbridge Foundation, one of those famously prudish moral uplift societies reminiscent of the one Ezra Ounce in Dames a decade earlier was a part of. But Hubert doesn't actually run it; that job falls to his sister Hannah. The two of them have a niece Janey who has some musical and dance talent, and Hubert would like Ferris to give Janey an audition.

Ferris isn't pleased with this intrusion at first, until he realizes Hubert is from the Bainbridge Foundation and what they have a reputation for. The Bainbridge Foundation can get the show raided and shut down without Ferris having to pay off Fay's contract. And then, when Fay starts working with Stanton, Ferris sets about manipulating Hubert to get back at Stanton. Fortunately for Ferris, Hannah has gone off to Seattle for two months to preside over a conference of the foundation's western branch or something. Ferris sees how weak-willed Hubert is, and uses that to get Hubert to do all sorts of things that are dishonest at best and highly illegal at worst, which of course brings up the question of how Hubert is going to get out of this movie both satisfying the Production Code, and staying out of prison.

For most of this section of the movie, Fay is not really a part of the movie, at least not on screen. But then she learns that Ferris has used Hubert to get control of Stanton's musical that she's in, and she takes pity on Hubert and cooks up a scheme of her own to get back at Ferris and have a happy ending.

Having watched The Heat's On, I can see why Mae West got out of movies after this and why this one isn't very well remembered. If it hadn't starred Mae West, it's the sort of movie that would probably have a reputation for a second-tier movie designed to entertain the home front during World War II by not actually making much reference to the war. (Lloyd Bridges has an early role as a solder boyfriend to Janey, and Hannah is asked whether her trip to Seattle is really necessary, but that's about it.) Mae West is terribly underused and doesn't have the best one-liners her. Also, most of the music is forgettable, with the exception of Hazel Scott, the black pianist who is quite good.

The Heat's On is for Mae West completists only, I think. Well, maybe for Lloyd Bridges completists too.