Dancers in the Dark

At a taxi-dancing joint, Miriam Hopkins and saxophonist William Collier Jr. are in love. His pal, Jack Oakie, knows she has a past with other men -- including him -- and tries to break them up. Meanwhile, hood George Raft shows up, wants to renew his relationship with Hopkins.

I'm a sucker for Miriam Hopkins, and the more I see of her Paramount pictures, the more I fall under her spell. Even though her singing is obviously lip-synced to some uncredited singer, she has me convinced she's a girl with a past who's really in love.

Not that she's alone in this. Oakie is very solid in his role, and George Raft as the sleazy hood who causes all the trouble is good. He'd be better elsewhere, of course, but he does a bit of his coin-flipping bit that he would exploit in at least three other movies. The result is a big, noisy, messy story, whose moving parts all work well.