August 3 Delores del Rio

Happy Birthday to Tony Bennett and Delores del Rio

To celebrate Delores del Rio’s birthday I watched In Caliente. Pat O’Brian’s eyes glaze over for 2 things liquor and Delores del Rio. Pat plays an editor to a big New York magazine. Edward Everett Horton plays his friend and assistant. Pat is supposed to marry Glenda Farrell and Edward thinks she is a gold digger. Pat gets drunk and sleeps it off for over a day as Edward takes him unconscious to Caliente Mexico. Delores is a guest at the hotel, she is a famous dancer/singer. Her manager is a card cheat. Through a misunderstanding Edward thinks that she is an “adventuress” and hires her to entertain Pat, because upon seeing her Pat stated (paraphrasing) that was a woman he could give up drinking for. Delores agrees because Pat wrote a bad review of her performance in New York the year earlier. He called her “bag of bones”.

Pat falls for her. He falls in love very quickly. Edward tells Pat what he did. Pat still wants to marry her, but for revenge. Glenda then shows up when Delores and Pat are in an intimate moment. They argue and she won’t see him again. She decides to dance in the hotels show that night to prove to Pat that she is a good entertainer. In a very strange Berkley number there are horses and bandits as part of the production. Pat realizes he really is in love with Delores and chases after her. He gets her in the end and they marry.

The big production number is The Woman In Red. In the Berkley collection there is just a scene of the musical so I was interested in the movie. It is a 1935 release and I wonder how the costumes got through the production code. There is not a lot of skin showing but the gowns look like there is a lot of mesh with strategically placed embroidery.

Delores looks her best in this film. She is stylish and graceful. She flows when she moves. She has great facial bone structure. She pool dives a few times and seems like an expert, an arch down and there was very little splash.