This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

When viewing this very good film, I was thinking of The Yellow Rolls Royce which starred Rex Harrison and so many others. In Tales of Manhattan, this time the story revolves around a jacket that has been cursed by the maker who was fired from his position after he made it. He cursed that everyone wearing the jacket would endure hard luck.The story really starts off that way with Charles Boyer, portraying a stage actor in the film, being shot by jealous husband Thomas Mitchell over Boyer's affair with his wife-Rita Hayworth. The latter really shows her true colors after the shooting.The second part with Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda and Cesar Romero is much more comical when Romero and Rogers are slated to wed, only for Rogers to discover Romero's indiscretion and when he calls in Fonda to claim what was found was his, Rogers falls for Fonda.Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton, married in real life, were great as a team here and it's hilarious when Laughton conducts with the tuck that has bullet holes in it from the Boyer segment.The last 2 segments were marvelous with Edward G. Robinson, an ex-lawyer down on his luck and living in a settlement home, attending a class law reunion with the cad George Sanders mocking him and the finale when the money falls down from the sky in the torn tuck worn by a crook is heartwarming when it lands in a small black town just before Christmas. This was so inspirational.

So after about 35 years reading about this film in the book "The Films of W.C. Fields", I finally watched Tales of Manhattan on YouTube. It has several short films connected together by a black coat. First segment stars Charles Boyer as an actor in love with Rita Hayworth who is married to Thomas Mitchell. Yes, you read that right. Second segment has Ginger Rogers finding what her fiancée Cesar Romero does when she's not around so the latter tries to pawn his coat with the incriminating evidence to future best man Henry Fonda. Third segment has Charles Laughton leaving his honky tonk playing days behind when he gets his dream job of conducting a symphony though he has to find a coat first of which one is given by his real-life spouse Elsa Lanchester. Fourth segment has Edward G. Robinson down on his luck when his friend James Gleason offers a formal suit so he can attend his 25th college reunion at the Waldolf Astoria where everyone except George Sanders seems glad to see him. What was supposed to be the fifth segment-cut from original release supposedly because it overextended the length-had W.C. Fields buying the coat from Phil Silvers-the only time two lovable con men met on film-before lecturing a hoity toity crowd-of which Margaret Dumont is among them-on the evils of alcohol. But nobody saw what happened before the meeting. Final segment takes place on a poor farm where the coat falls "from Heaven" in front of Paul Robeson and Ethel Waters. They give it to Eddie "Rochester" Anderson who tries to take the money found in it but ends up sharing it with his congregation. Also appearing are Clarence Muse and Cordell Hickman who is one of the kids. He plays Nicodemus. I first remembered him from the last "Our Gang" short ever made-Tale of a Dog. Oh, and Robeson and the Hall Johnson Choir sing their hearts out. Just about all of these sequences have some entertainment in them with the most hilarious one being the Rogers/Romero/Fonda one and the Robinson one being the most touching. About the last sequence: Robeson had returned to Hollywood after years of making films in England and this was only his second-after Universal's Show Boat from 1936-major studio appearance, that studio being 20th Century-Fox. If you know about him and his previous films, you know he would usually play dignified characters without stereotypical characteristics as well as present fine messages. While something of his point of view is here (that of openly sharing the wealth), he felt the entire sequence did a poor job of representing his race as being childlike hobos speaking in almost unintelligible dialect and spontaneously singing "Halleujah!" when a windfall go their way. At least, I think that may have been his problem with it. He was appalled by it so much, he tried to buy all prints of that sequence and destroy it. Anyway, the end result was he held a press conference and said he'd no longer appear in films because of the way his race was depicted then and to his dying day in 1976, he never did. A shame, really. Still, all his films are now available on DVD (well, except for Show Boat though there may still be some VHS copies around) so if anyone wants to be a Robeson completest, be my guest. So on that note, Tales of Manhattan is very much worth a look.

The somber men bringing a box to Paul Orman's apartment, as the story begins, are tailors that want to assure their client the tails coat suit they are delivering will fit him perfectly. Alas, the suit serves as a sort of a link that holds together the history of a suit, and the people that wear it. Each of the five narratives are different from one another. With the exception of the last one, Julien Duvivier's excellent American film is a joy to watch.The film boasts a galaxy of collaborators. Twentieth Century Fox produced the film during the period of WWII, as it gathered talent from the film industry that came together in a movie that should be seen by serious fans. Julien Duvivier, a distinguished French director, came to Hollywood during the years of the conflict in Europe. He had a natural talent for getting the best out of his cast and crew, as he proves in here.Some of the best figures working in movies during those years came together in what appears to be a coup of casting. Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell and Eugene Palette are featured in the initial sequence. Cesar Romero, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Gail Patrick and Roland Young are seen in the second story. Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester and Victor Francen appear in the third installment. The great Edgar G. Robinson, James Gleason, George Sanders, and Henry Davenport, make their segment one of the best ones in the picture. The last one is not too shabby either, it showed performers of the stature of Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson in the last tale, which is a bit too mawkish to end the film. All the players assembled for this project do wonders under Mr. Duvivier's guidance.The writing was not too bad either. Distinguished writers of the stature of Donald Ogden Stewart, Ben Hecht, Ferenc Molnar, and even an uncredited Buster Keaton enhanced the stories for the viewer's enjoyment. Joseph Walker's cinematography worked wonders, as did the art direction by Richard Day and Boris Leven. One of the highlights of the film is the hunting lodge of the first story full of antlers. The musical score is credited to Sol Kaplan.Fans of Julien Duvivier should not miss his fantastic vision in "Tales of Manhattan".

I'm a sucker for the La Ronde or Slacker-type "life is a circle" films, with some plot device used in most cases to carry the story from character to character through the whole film, possibly back to the person it started with and possibly not. In this case, the ending is truly bizarre and unlikely, and almost kills a film which was a whole lot of fun up until that point. There's a jacket, see, a handsome tailcoat that belongs to a famous Broadway start, and it's the jacket that migrates, from Charles Boyer the start to playboy Caesar Romero, on to would-be composer Charles Laughton and down-and-out lawyer Edward G. Robinson, while also touching friends, lovers and enemies like Elsa Lanchester, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Ginger Rogers, and Henry Fonda. All well and good with plenty of moments of intrigue, romance, and good old fashioned star-power, until the coat makes one last journey, out of an airplane and into the hands of a poor black man in some unnamed and somewhat unearthly southern town. Paul Robeson's voice and presence are certainly powerful enough, but they aren't alone enough to keep the last segment's religious mawkishness from leaving a bad taste in the mouth as songs are sung and massive amounts of money are miraculously found and put to good use by the poor townspeople. Well, it was the war, and I guess they needed an uplifting ending...