Mon 12 Jan 2009
Archived Movie Review: SHE LOVED A FIREMAN (1937).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews1 Comment
SHE LOVED A FIREMAN. 1937. Dick Foran, Ann Sheridan, Robert Armstrong, Eddie Acuff, Veda Ann Borg. Director: John Farrow.
If you don’t like movies about firemen, the only reason I can come up with as to why you might want to watch this one anyway is that Ann Sheridan is in this one, too. (See my review of The Patient in Room 18 which I posted here not so long ago.) TNT recently ran these movies back-to-back, and I didn’t get the connection until I finally got around to watching them.
There is very little plot to She Loved a Fireman. What there is, is a lot of documentary footage showing what it takes to become a firemen, how to get through fire college and so on, but the story itself is pretty slim.
Dick Foran plays “Red” Tyler, an ex-bookie and a small-time political hack who, when he needs a job, decides to become a fireman. He gets on the wrong side of the captain, however (Robert Armstrong), and to get his goat he tries to charm his way into the life of the older man’s sister, which is where Ann Sheridan comes in.
While Foran is an oaf — a good-natured one, but still an oaf — I think you can tell even from this mediocre film that Miss Sheridan had chances to go places in the movies.
Other than this one small positive note, you’ll have to wait for the final scenes — there’s just got to be a big fire in a movie like this, doesn’t there? — to find any other excuse for not doing whatever else it was you were supposed to be doing instead of watching this movie. (Never mind. Ann Sheridan is reason enough.)
[UPDATE] 01-12-09. Even though we really are digging into obscurity when we watch picture shows like this one, there’s almost always something positive that can be said about even the most underwhelming B-movie (like this one).
Don’t take just my word for it. It’s not only me. Everyone who’s left a comment about this film on IMDB is in total agreement that Ann Sheridan is the standout attraction, if not the only one.
But if that isn’t enough to help you decide whether or not to watch this movie the next time it comes around on TCM, they’ve helpfully provided an online trailer for it. I’ve just watched it, and if you’ve read this far, I think you should too.
Truth in advertising. The photo you see here of Miss Sheridan has no other connection with Fireman. It’s a publicity shot for a movie called Winter Carnival, which came out a couple of years later, in 1939.
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:17 am
Sheridan in her heyday was known as the “Oomph Girl” and deservedly. Her take on the working glass knockout enriched many a film from B programers like this to her star turn in King’s Row as Ronald Reagan’s wife. She was also the model for “Red Hot Riding-Hood” the heroine of the famous Tex Avery MGM cartoons that inspired Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Late in her career she starred in the deservedly short lived and legendary flop Pistols and Petticoats that cast her as the fast gun mother of a brood of westerners in a misguided half hour series. Still at Warner’s in the forties she carved her own niche and appeared in many good films holding her own against some of the studio’s best. Brash, tough, down to earth, and yet vulnerable she elevated every film she was in.
A little note on Dick Foran, before Roy Rogers Foran did several singing westerns at Warners. They didn’t really catch on, but it is interesting that the horse he rode was none other than Golden Cloud, the animal Oliva De Haviland rode in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and which Roy Rogers purchased from the studio and rechristened Trigger.