Sick Product of a Sick System

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Playing the title role of The Girl From Manhattan is Dorothy Lamour who came over from Paramount to do this independent film released by United Artists. Her leading man here is George Montgomery slipping out of his western and action features to play a young minister assigned to a parish by Bishop Charles Laughton. Montgomery is excited about going to a parish which is about to get a brand new spanking church. The problem is that it is going to be built on the site of a boardinghouse which Ernest Truex owns. Truex is also Dorothy Lamour's uncle.Montgomery is urged to board there by Laughton for a bit and he's caught in quite a dilemma. Of course that's nothing compared to the jackpot Truex is in. His generous easy going ways have put him in debt to Raymond Largay. In fact the only two guests that are paying regular are Lamour and Montgomery. The rest to be brutally frank are a gang of deadbeats. But they are delightful deadbeats like Constance Collier, Hugh Herbert, Frank Orth and more. It's just like the Vanderhof house in You Can't Take It With You.Truex's jackpot is similar to the one Lionel Barrymore is in in the Frank Capra film. The tone here is far more whimsical than the one George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart took with their story. I wish there had been more of Charles Laughton. He isn't given much to do, but does create an interesting character in his Bishop with very little to work with.The Girl From Manhattan is a pleasant bit of viewing, but could have been better.

The edges of this movie are tolerable. You have some fine, easily recognized actors doing some amusing bits, including Charles Laughton, Hugh Herbert, and George Chandler. The characters in the boarding house, eccentric misfits, are sweet and amusing.The problem is the center of the movie. Why would anybody put Dorothy Lamour, one of the sexiest and most beautiful women in the world in 1948, in a movie where her leading man is a priest? Lamour is stripped of all sexiness and there's not a hint of desire in any of her scenes with George Montgomery (Rev. Tom Walker). The only emotions that she's allowed to display next to the priest is some nostalgia for their youthful friendship and a bit of anger that he doesn't help her to save her uncle's boarding house.What should have been the center of the movie, Lamour seducing the new priest from his vows, gets sublimated into the priest trying to decide if he can be as good a priest as his dead father.The movie is simply annoying most of the time. The sets, costumes, direction and editing are on the level of a bad, cheap, 1950's television episode. I kept checking how much time was left every five minutes.George Montgomery, Dorothy Lamour and Charles Laughton fans might want to sit through it for the sake of cinematic completeness. Everyone else will have a difficult time making it to the end.

I haven't seen the film since 1948 and the only thing I remember is the "mink coat/synthetic mink coat" dialog between Dorothy and Charles Laughton: The Bishop, eying the coat, asks..."has it suddenly turned cold out"? Carol, wearing the mink, explains that she drove in with her convertible top down but realizes instantly that the suspicious, curmudgeonly old Bishop KNOWS how beautiful New York models GET mink coats, offers that it isn't real mink, but synthetic and given to her for modeling it. Carol departs; The Bishop picks up the telephone and dials a number. "Fred... this is the Bishop..... Is there such a thing as synthetic mink"? (scoffingly--Fred you're going to think I'm daft for even asking a question to which I already know the answer) We don't hear the reply but Laughton's reflective face, voice and manner make the movie for me. Sure it is a knock-off on the popularity of "Going my way" but when has Hollywood ever failed to cash in on a good thing and Laughton, here, is as memorable as Orson Welles working in other peoples' less than stellar films. I will suggest to TCM that they run the film so I can see it again.

The first reviewer has done a fine job of summarizing the film. What remains to be said, however, is that the film is a stinker. The script is particularly awful. It was designed to appeal to small town folks, apparently, and focuses upon homey matters such as the loss of a boarding house by a wicked businessman. Lamour and Montgomery are so wholesome and giggly you want to wretch. Christians are, as usual, cast as bigoted and gossipy. But how about Charles Laughton as a bishop. (What church? Methodist?) Hugh Herbert is completely wasted. The jokes are extremely lame. And 34-year-old Dorothy as a top high fashion model in New York is, well, ridiculous. George Montgomery should have stuck with Westerns, although he does his very best with his lame lines. A company on e-Bay is selling this film right now, which is how I came to see it. Money totally wasted.