The Heat's On

For the television play, see The Heat's On (Australian Playhouse). For the song by Count Basie, see Basie Big Band.

The Heat's On
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gregory Ratoff
Screenplay by	Fitzroy Davis George S. George
Starring	Mae West Victor Moore William Gaxton
Cinematography	Franz Planer
Edited by	Otto Meyer
Music by	Yasha Bunchuk John Leipold
Production company	Gregory Ratoff Productions
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	November 25, 1943 (1943-11-25)
Running time	79 min
Country	United States
Language	English

The Heat's On (1943) is a musical movie starring Mae West, William Gaxton, and Victor Moore, and released by Columbia Pictures. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Plot

Broadway star Fay Lawrence is a temperamental diva who is reluctantly persuaded by a Broadway producer to star in his latest production.

Cast

• Mae West as Fay Lawrence
• Victor Moore as Hubert Bainbridge
• William Gaxton as Tony Ferris
• Lester Allen as Mouse Beller
• Alan Dinehart as Forrest Stanton
• Mary Roche as Janey Adair
• Lloyd Bridges as Andy Walker
• Almira Sessions as Hannah Bainbridge
• Jack Owens as Himself
• Hazel Scott as Herself
• Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra as Themselves
• Edward Earle as Writer (uncredited)

Production background

Mae West was 49 at the time of the movie's production, her first film in three years, after an interlude starring on Broadway. Unlike her previous films, for which West wrote the screenplays and/or story material, West played no part in creating the story or dialogue of The Heat's On. Perhaps as a result, the movie was not a box office success. West did not return to the screen until 27 years later in Myra Breckinridge (1970), and chose to pursue a successful career in theater instead.

Critical response

In The Nation in 1943, critic James Agee wrote that the picture is a "stale-ale musical in which a lot of good people apathetically support the almost equally apathetic Mae West ... Mae West is mainly as good as ever, which is still plenty good enough for me; but evidently she and her colleagues feel that too few people agree with me." ^[4] Leonard Maltin declared, "Befuddled Moore and colorful Cugat are fun, but there isn't enough of West in this film; when she's on-screen, she's just as funny as ever." ^[5]

References

1. The Heat's On at IMDb
2. "The Heat's On". FilmAffinity . filmaffinity.com. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
3. "The Heat's On (1943)". AFI. afi.com . Retrieved 21 December 2015.
4. Agee, James (1969). Agee on Film Volume 1. The Universal Library.
5. Maltin, Leonard (2015). Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide (3rd ed.). Plume Book. ISBN   978-0-14-751682-4.

External links

• The Heat's On at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• The Heat's On at IMDb
• The-Heat-s-On at the TCM Movie Database