Wonderful Movie

Sorry, this movie sucks

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

"Juke Girl" is a film from "Warner Bros" which quickly faded into obscurity not long after its release in 1942. The leads, Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan were in a far better film that came out the same year, "King's Row." The plot is very confusing and it's hard to keep up with what is going on from one scene to the next. A good supporting cast is largely wasted and Alan Hale in particular, has nothing to do. A few punch up scenes and location photography can't compensate for a poor story. This is only for hardened fans of the old days of Hollywood.

OK, I'm pretty far down on the list of previous reviewers, but I just saw this last night (April 12, 2016) on TCM as the second of a Ronald Reagan-Ann Sheridan double-bill following their pairing in "King's Row." So, by now readers already know the plot about the adversarial relationship between farmers and exploitive fat-cat (in Cat-Tail) vegetable buyer. The credit roll inside a jukebox rendering and jazzy musical score is wildly misleading. (Don't change channels; keep watching.) This movie is a surprisingly gritty story. I'm not going to summarize the storyline. If you're reading the reviews, you know the story by now. Here's what I want to point out: THE SET. When characters walk along the honky-tonk, "good times" strip to relieve the harsh realities of their dreary existence, check the names of the saloons. Somebody at Warner Bros. has a lot of fun naming these places: Muckeye's, Little Zombie, Goons, etc. All in all, an enjoyable film. The best dialogue is (surprisingly) between Sheridan and multi-talented Richard Whorf. Yes,credibility is stretched very far in the plot.***SPOILER ALERT*** Reagan steals a very nice truck and never held accountable.(Come on, he would have been locked up in the Cat-Tail jail on the spot.) Later, however, he IS arrested for a murder with the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. This leads me to my biggest criticism: The characters act in a way that only serves the screenwriter's purpose - not their own characters.

Considering how distant Cesar Chavez and Ronald Reagan were in philosophy, what would have the founder of the United Farm Workers thought of the Gipper starring in a film about migrant workers? I wonder if Chavez ever saw Juke Girl? A title by the way which one would never guess was about agriculture. When I first saw the title on the list of credits for Ronald Reagan, I thought it was some Forties musical with swing dancing.It's far from that. The title role is played by Ann Sheridan and she works in a roadside bar and dance club favored by the itinerant farm workers in that area of Florida. Two such migrant workers are Ronald Reagan and Richard Whorf who arrive in town. Whorf goes to work for the local wholesaler Gene Lockhart who pretty much sets prices his way as the farmers have nowhere else to sell their produce. Having lost a farm to the dust bowl in Kansas, Reagan's sympathies go out to farmer George Tobias who is trying to beat Lockhart's monopoly. The two friends become adversaries, but the friendship is strong, how strong everyone in the cast finds out before the film is over.Juke Girl with its deceptive title is a far cry from The Grapes Of Wrath, both book and film. The Joad family is on the road, not just the male breadwinner. Some of the actions Reagan takes in this film could never have been done by Tom Joad who carried responsibility for the whole Joad clan on the road. The players perform pretty much according to type. Ann Sheridan has some juicy lines, like the character she played in Torrid Zone had moved from Central America to Florida. Gene Lockhart who specialized in portraying particularly craven individuals is within his element, this may have been the most craven part Lockhart ever played.Juke Girl is hardly the sociological treatise that The Grapes Of Wrath was. But it's entertaining enough for the fans of the players in the cast.

A depression story that while it entertains fails in the long haul. A too good looking Ronald Reagan plays a Tom Joad character by the name of Steve Talbot. All he wants to do farm but the local boss Madden , played against type by Gene Lockhart, doesn't want to see the farmers organize and who is aided by Steve's best friend Danny, Richard Whorf, and Madden's top henchman Cully, Howard Da Silva. And of course there is Steve's love interest Lola, Ann Sheridan. What hurts the story are the good looks of the leads. These are not the worn out physically depleted characters seen in The Grapes of Wrath. This cast looks like they just stepped right out of the latest pages of a Hollywood Magazine or Vogue. Apparently staring in this picture had no impact on the young Ronald Reagan who as president had little to none of Steve Madden but lots of Henry Madden. I guess if nothing else this film proves Reagan a good actor who was able to read the lines not live them.