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| Lucille Ball in Lured |
Cast: Lucille Ball, George Sanders, Charles Coburn, Cedric Hardwicke, Boris Karloff, Joseph Calleia, Alan Mowbray, George Zucco, Robert Coote, Alan Napier, Tanis Chandler. Screenplay: Leo Rosten, based on a screenplay by Jacques Companéez, Ernst Neuback, and Simon Gantillon. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Production design: Nicolai Remisoff. Film editing: John M. Foley. Music: Michel Michelet.
Lured gave Lucille Ball a chance to break out of -- or at least transcend -- the wisecracking dame roles in which she had been cast. She plays Sandra Carpenter, an American dancer who came to London with a show that swiftly closed and is now forced to make ends meet by working as a taxi dancer, the profession immortalized in the Rodgers and Hart song "Ten Cents a Dance." When a chum of hers, a fellow dancer, disappears, she finds herself aiding Scotland Yard in an investigation of similar mysterious disappearances of young women: She plays bait, a role that puts her in contact with all manner of unsavory characters, including a crazed fashion designer played in a cameo role by Boris Karloff. But it also puts her in touch with Robert Fleming (George Sanders), a nightclub entrepreneur, with whom she falls in love. Eventually, Fleming himself will become a prime suspect in the case. It's a busy, semicomic crime story with few surprises for anyone who has seen this sort of thing before, made memorable by Douglas Sirk's crisp direction and Ball's smart, attractive presence -- one of the few substantial film roles she found before becoming a major star on television. William H. Daniels's cinematography helps give Ball the kind of glamour she seldom found on the big screen, somehow making her hair look orange even in black-and-white. There's not a lot of chemistry between Ball and Sanders, who is trying to transcend his own stereotype, the world-weary cad, but even in their separate ways they're always fun to watch.
