edwagreen Enjoyable 1942 film with Bette Grable and Victor Mature in Hawaii. Son of a wealthy scion, Mature falls for Grable while he is trying to get her father, a wonderful Thomas Mitchell, to sell his father, George Barbier, land. The relationship between the two elders is terrific of one of hostility then amiability until a fast working executive tries to evict Mitchell from the land for non-payment of taxes.Jack Oakie steals the show as Mature's sidekick. Hilo Hattie, as the Hawaiian woman who has designs on Oakie, belts out those Hawaiian songs and acts as a Jewish mother by constantly feeding Oakie.The songs of Hawaiian and American style are great and it's too bad that the film was just an hour and eighteen minutes.

MartinHafer Jeff Harper (Victor Mature) has been sent by his father to bargain for some prime cattle land....in Hawaii. While the cattle industry was big on some of the islands, why folks from the continental US would want a piece of this action is confusing. Regardless, Jeff arrives on the fictional Hawaiian island of Ahmi-Oni with his friend, Rusty (Jack Oakie). The first thing Jeff sees is Eileen (Betty Grable) and he's hooked but thinks (??) that she is a native and doesn't understand English (despite being VERY blonde). Soon he's in love and seems to have forgotten about his business...and soon Dad arrives to try to get talks back on track. Who will win out in the end? The love-struck son or the business-minded dad?This film is a pleasant and lightweight bit of entertainment. The songs are mostly a distraction as big production numbers seem to have nothing to do with island life...but so it was in the 1940s! The romance is also cute but the best part is the grouchy gather, as George Barbier as one of the best supporting actors of his age when it came to playing old grouches! Enjoyable but slight.

weezeralfalfa No wonder Clark Gable was hesitant to star in a film('Call of the Wild') with notorious scene stealer Jack Oakie as his sidekick. Jack really hams it up in this one with his nonstop clowning and occasional songs: a complete vaudeville entertainer!. If you like Jack, you'll like this early Technicolor escapist fare. He's joined at times by veteran comedic heavy Billy Gilbert, as the crude wild-looking cannibalistic father of the luscious Hawaiian girl Jack is romancing. Problem is, a matronly-looking native woman(Hilo Hattie) is very hot for Jack and he's not interested. She eventually does a song and dance number, serving in the combined roles of Charlotte Greenwood and Carmen Miranda in the standard Fox formula for Grable/Faye/Blaine musical comedies. This is followed by an all female native song and dance routine headed by Betty. Meanwhile, beefcake leading man Victor Mature is romancing and fighting with Betty . As a non-singing/dancing, non-comedian, he has little else to do. Also, the fathers of Betty and Victor initially are at each other's throats over the ownership of a key bit of land on this small island. In the end, all is forgiven and all the Caucasian principals join at the finale for an encore rendition of the theme song 'Sing me a song of the islands'.Plenty of music and comedy dispersed among the heavier stuff. Probably, Jack has more screen time than either Betty or Victor. A native male singing group also interacts with Jack. Betty's singing and dancing is pretty limited. Too bad this film is so rarely shown on TV and is not available on DVD. We really could use a Jack Oakie Collection to showcase his now under-appreciated entertainment talent. He was a significant presence in several other Fox musical comedies, including:'Tin Pan Alley', 'Hello, Frisco, Hello' and 'The Great American Broadcast' Too bad he was never in one of those films including Carmen Miranda. I think those two would have made a dynamite comedic pair.

bkoganbing I'm not sure but that Song of the Islands was had been done before December 7, 1941 and definitely before US servicemen started bleeding and dying in the South Seas. There certainly is no mention of World War II at all in this escapist Betty Grable film where she's poaching on Dorothy Lamour's south sea territory.I'm sure that Darryl Zanuck must have saw the kind of money that Paramount was raking in with those Dorothy Lamour sarong pictures. So why not put the woman who had risen to be their top musical star in the tropics. They gave Betty a hula grass skirt instead of a sarong, the better to show her legs with. Zanuck was also smart enough not to pass the blond Grable as a native Hawaiian. She's come home to teach school on the island where her father, Thomas Mitchell, has a small place, but also where George Barbier is the absentee owner of a cattle ranch. Barbier's place is run by Hal Spencer, but Victor Mature and Jack Oakie sail over from America to see if they can buy out Mitchell. Mature is Barbier's son and of course when he and Grable meet, the inevitable sparks do fly.Zanuck also put an official Hawaiian imprimatur on Song of the Islands by using Harry Owens to write the music with Mack Gordon's lyrics. Owens was the musical interpreter of Hawaii to the world, his most famous song being Sweet Leilani. And a Hawaiian national treasure named Hilo Hattie also appears in the film, singing in her inimitable style and setting her marriage cap for Jack Oakie.It's all light and pleasant escapist entertainment and Song of the Islands is a good indication of why Betty Grable was the number one pin-up of GIs all over the globe. Except for Rita Hayworth.