People are voting emotionally.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

On paper, "Lady Of Burlesque" sounds as if it can't miss: a musical murder mystery with Barbara Stanwyck and a female-heavy cast. But it's not as good as it sounds. The first problem, mentioned in most reviews, is the censorship of the time, which for example dictates that Stanwyck's most suggestive bumps and grinds must be exiled offscreen! The soundtrack is either too chaotic or too poorly transferred to DVD, and the general production "feel" is strictly that of a B-movie, which is surprising for a star of Stanwyck's stature. At least the mystery itself is good, and Stanwyck's second dance number is pretty darn impressive for someone who rarely dabbled in the musical genre. ** out of 4.

This movie shows how much the director matters in ensemble pieces. Wellman was one of those guys who seemed incapable of making a bad movie, even when stuck with limited resources and censorship, as in this case. This is basically a one-set film and it was shot under more or less double censorship (Code and wartime). But it's highly entertaining, considering what they couldn't show. (If I had been stuck in North Africa or the South Pacific in 1943 I would much sooner have seen this than those dreadful patriotic movies like THOUSANDS CHEER and SO PROUDLY WE HAIL or even CASABLANCA.) It's full of watchable funny girls of the kind that all but vanished (into the kitchen) after Pearl Harbor. The murder-mystery element is played the right way-- completely unseriously. Stanwyck is totally appealing, and Stephanie Bachelor ("Only tramps work in Toledo!") is one bombshell of a funny girl. Iris Adrian, Marion Martin, and Victoria Faust all make a big impression. Pinky Lee gets to do his schtick, including some tricky dancing, and O'Shea is good as the baggy-pants comic who's after Stanwyck. Both the writing (by Gunn) and editing are snappy (and witty: I love that quick cutaway to 'the Princess' reading her fan mail) and nobody just shows up and reads lines. I doubt anyone could have filmed this better in 1943.

LADY OF BURLESQUE,an old humble screwball mystery ,very clumsily made, has one thing of real interest—Mrs. Stanwyck, at her rather hottest, as a sex—bomb. As for the rest, it's a quite insipid screwball comedy, unpretentious B slapdash. I find this genre as admissible as the sleazy fancily violent thrillers of the '70s.Mrs. Stanwyck gives a rather standard performance as a wisecracker ;she makes such nice remarks about how men were looking at her ankles when she was 11;today, such confessions would sound utterly unacceptable. But LADY OF … was made in a time when people were having so much more fun ….LADY OF BURLESQUE is about a couple of murders in a burlesque theater ; Mrs. Stanwyck is the Colombina, and an Irishman is her Pierrot; hence the screwball. The execution is, as I already stated, silly and clumsy.Balast.

If you're looking for authenticity, atmosphere and the stink of flop sweat then this is for you. Gypsy Rose Lee prevailed on room-mate Craig Rice to help whip her memoirs of burlesque into shape and throw in a murder or two for ballast and William A. Wellman does his usual pro job behind the camera. In 1943 there was no way you could show stripping - which was, of course, the main attraction of burlesque - but what we do get is actual Top Banana-Second Banana routines that had been used in burlecue since year One. With hindsight we can compare the atmosphere to Gypsy -both in stage and film form - and Sugar Babies, which revived the format in the eightiesbut this is the next best thing to being there. Don't miss it.