Lamour had made a career out of tropical musicals, belting out hits while looking beautiful and wearing a sarong designed by Edith Head. Rainbow Island continued that formula. It was a bright Technicolor musical designed to show off Lamour's figure in the sarong while she sang the Ted Koehler/Burton Lane song Beloved, and make them forget, for 90 minutes, that the United States had been at war for two years. Directed by Ralph Murphy, the film was based on a story by Seena Owen, who had been a star in the silent film days, most famously in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) and had turned to writing. The screenplay was adapted by Arthur Phillips and Walter DeLeon. In it, Lamour plays Lona, a doctor's daughter who has been raised on an island, and encounters three American seamen who are hiding there from the Japanese. One of the seamen is mistakenly thought to be a god and the trouble begins.
In the cast with Lamour was Eddie Bracken, Paramount's young comedy star, Gil Lamb, and, oddly cast, respected dramatic actress Anne Revere as the Queen of the Island. As Jeanine Basinger wrote in The Star Machine, "She had won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1944 for her role as Elizabeth Taylor's mother in National Velvet. And yet that very same year, she was cast as the queen of a south seas island in Rainbow Island [...] Revere is photographed standing around in a sarong, wearing lotus blossoms in her hair and yards of bangles on her arms. She strides through the jungle carrying a decorative spear and delivering such lines as 'Bring them to the temple of Moh-Moh.'" In the August 21, 1943 edition of Billboard Magazine it was reported that producer Buddy DeSylva was going to put Johnnie Johnston in the lead role opposite Dorothy Lamour. Johnston did not appear in the film, but Barry Sullivan did. Two of the girls playing Lamour's companions were Yvonne De Carlo and future Superman star, Noel Neill.
Released on September 5, 1944, Rainbow Island was seen for being exactly what it was. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther pointed out that Paramount was recycling the Road formula, but wished that "the script were better and Bracken and Lamb were Crosby and Hope. Well, everything can't be expected....Miss Lamour -- back to saronging -- gets the most out of what she has...Mr. Bracken makes a very balmy comic, and when he is on the screen, there is constant cause for amusement, if only to look at him...A scene in which Mr. Bracken, as the god, gives paternal advice to a maiden on how to please a husband is truly sidesplitting stuff....Mr. Sullivan fits into the picture as a romantic second-lead should, and Miss Lamour moans one song, Beloved,...But it is mainly the job of Mr. Bracken that makes it worth going to see."
Producer: E.D. Leshin
Director: Ralph Murphy
Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, Arthur Phillips; Seena Owen (story)
Cinematography: Karl Struss
Art Direction: Haldane Douglas, Hans Dreier
Music: Roy Webb
Film Editing: Arthur Schmidt
Cast: Dorothy Lamour (Lona), Eddie Bracken (Toby Smith), Gil Lamb (Pete Jenkins), Barry Sullivan (Ken Masters), Forrest Orr (Dr. Curtis), Anne Revere (Queen Okalana), Reed Hadley (High Priest Kahuna), Marc Lawrence (Alcoa), Adia Kuznetzoff (Executioner), Olga San Juan (Miki).
C-98m.
by Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Basinger, Jeanine The Star Machine
"Coast Running Swoonstakes, Casting Every Bary - And, in One Case, His Brother Billboard 21 Aug 43
Crowther, Bosley, "'Rainbow Island,' With Bracken and Lamour Opens at Criterion", New York Times 26 Oct 44
Green, Stanley and Schmidt, Elaine Hollywood Musicals Year by Year
The Internet Movie Database
