The Man I Love!
By Dennis Dermody
Available on DVD exclusively from the Warner Archive collection is this brilliant 1947 musical film noir -- The Man I Love. Directed by Raoul Walsh, it stars Ida Lupino as Petey Brown, a tough lounge singer playing clubs in New York who comes to California to see her family. Her sister (Andrea King) is working as a waitress with a shell-shocked soldier husband in the hospital and her brother is working for a slimy hood (Robert Alda) at a nightclub, so Petey decides to intercede by getting a job in the club to watch over things. Petey meets a troubled hard-drinking piano player (Bruce Bennett) who's still pining over his first wife, and she falls hard for him. This is the movie that inspired Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, and his section in New York Stories has a moment right out of this movie. You can see why Scorsese loves this movie -- it's tough, tender, sophisticated, and is drenched in that moody Warner Brothers atmosphere. Lupino is simply unforgettable and the movie has haunted me for years.
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Posted at 10:21 on Jul 17, 2009
I have not seen it in a while but I still remember Ida Lupino making me cry my heart out, she was so great. She is still a queen of noir (overlook the stupid tv show she did with her hubby, who also was a noir actor)if only her and Howard stuck to that genre.