gridoon2018 Jane Russell does look great in "The French Line", and she wears some smashing outfits, a few of which probably pushed the boundaries of censorship at that era. She doesn't manage to make us believe that she has fallen madly in love with Gilbert Roland, though - but who can hold that against her? Roland - or Roland's character in the film, if you prefer - is sleazy, charmless, and old. And in the supporting cast, Arthur Hunnicutt plays an insufferable Texas caricature. The story is stupid, the songs are forgettable and the comedy never really starts - so all you're left with is Jane, who, in this case, is not quite enough for "The French Line" to merit a recommendation. *1/2 out of 4.

slothropgr This is what "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" could've been without Hawks. It's as close to a remake as you can get. If you want to see a really BAD version, see "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes." I really only posted this to let everyone know that the FULL "Looking For Trouble" scene is posted on You-Tube. Makes it pretty obvious (the watchword for the whole flick) what the censors were up in arms about. Not to defend the CLD though they were the most effective publicity machine Hollywood never came up with, but JR does a WHOLE LOT of shaking' in the complete version. And it's definitely worth the trouble to check out. Amazing what "devout Christians" allowed themselves. We can only hope that if they ever put this out on DVD (and it isn't looking good) they'll include the whole thing instead of the prim careful official version.

ptb-8 I am so stunned by the hilarious vulgarity of THE FRENCH LINE it is all I can rave about. Stacked to the hilt with personally supervised costumes and showgirl extras by bra master Howard Hughes, notorious for making glamorous RKO into a burlesque production line, the casting couch there must have needed new springs by the time this technicolour-3D extravaganza hit screens Nationwide in 1954. Seemingly made for the knee slapping amusement of rich Texan hicks and crafted by trapped RKO professionals who must have sighed at having to work on such hillbilly antics, THE FRENCH LINE is an oceangoing girlie show wrought into some semblance of a farce. Jane Russell is as usual her spunky insolent self and gets to showcase her famous torpedo talents in outfits leaving nothing not spangled. Her two main numbers near the end of the film are the ones that caused the outrage in '54 and today are probably the best drag queen numbers one could imagine. A masterpiece of tawdry tinsel, swim outfits and frocks. You'll titter all through THE FRENCH LINE, rather like Howard must have all through production. Hilarious! Republic must have realized RKO wanted the bumpkin musical films and realized Judy Canova was no Jane Russell.

Greg Couture Before Howard Hughes managed to destroy his play toy, RKO Radio Pictures, with one production after another that fared rather dismally at the box office and, certainly, with the critics, his sexual preoccupations were on full view in "The French Line"The Roman Catholic censorship body, the Legion of Decency, did a great deal more to boost receipts than the first-run 3-D presentations ever could when they "Condemned" this one, for all the usual sex-related reasons, since even then the depiction of excessive violence was given a pass. Once a year those of us who attended Sunday Mass regularly found ourselves trapped into taking the L. of D. Pledge (Very few dared remain seated, lemmetellya!), which required us to promise that we would not patronize theaters which made a practice of booking "Condemned" films. Since only foreign films, usually those originating in France, managed to get the "Condemned" accolade and they rarely made it beyond the few New York theaters willing to book them, the stricture about avoiding those lascivious pleasure palaces that dared book a "Condemned" film was interpreted to mean that just one disgraceful example of cinematic lechery could get them placed on the list of verboten venues.When the Picwood Theater in West Los Angeles (which had a massive auditorium with a huge screen), not far from where we lived in Pacific Palisades at the time, was selected to show "The French Line" in 3-D, I was darned if I was going to have to wait until a neighborhood theater showed M-G-M's "The Swan", Grace Kelly's Hollywood curtain call, on a much smaller screen than when it was booked onto the Picwood's CinemaScope eye-stretcher, only a couple of years after management had dared book Jane Russell's eye-popping embarrassment. Eventually I managed to see "The French Line" on television, by which time our standards of taste had slipped somewhat, and I was sure hard put to understand what that big stink had all been about.