Cette nuit et toujours

When I first saw this movie I was a 13 year old boy in love with Rita Hayworth. In many ways the movie is a typical 40's musical chick flick. What is not typical is the story based on real events in London during the blitz instead of a contrived plot to frame the musical numbers. (See the recent "Mrs. Henderson Presents".) The story has bravery and tragedy as well as the usual romance and fluff. Also above average are the score by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn as well as the talents of Rita Hayworth, Janet Blair (in a strong second banana role), and Marc Platt, the dancer who went on to be one of the brothers in "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers". Without giving away the ending, have your hankie ready.

I'm floored, I 'm devastated, I could never imagine I would enjoy this film as immensely as I just did. Yesterday I saw "The Lady is Willing" -1942- with Marlene Dietrich, and although both films belong to the same era and in both there is froth and the morality of the time, they are worlds apart; Marlene looks like an embalmed corpse while Rita Hayworth is Mother Earth personified, all beauty, glamour and warmth, plus an excellent actress and a superb dancer, maybe the best dancer of all times for this kind of vehicle. "Tonight and Every Night" is so very well put together that it's almost a miracle, incredible how professional those people were!! Top drawer each one in whatever they were doing: The scriptwriters, the technical film crew, the dancers, the choreographers, wow, everybody and everything!! Let aside the war propaganda very understandable for those years, I was so impressed by the camaraderie, the human bondage between the company members, the warmth the whole movie is wrapped in... Rita Hayworth is so lovely that seems to be unreal, but not unreal the way Marlene was unreal, Marlene could freeze you on the spot with just a look, Rita doesn't look fake, she is just adorable and human. Maybe the rouge on her cheeks and the eye shadow are a bit too much, but the whole movie being a fantasy, who cares! The costumes are gorgeous, the color combinations are superb, all the dancers, male and female, have the most slender figures anyone can imagine, they look like Barbie dolls, but human --I don't know how to put it-- we talk so much nowadays about that controversial subject, anorexia, well, already in those years they have these slim figures we have nowadays, but inexplicably, they don't look emaciated, they look incredibly healthy!! An interesting detail was that all these chorus girls were...virgins... well, according to their behavior in this movie they were. Enough, I think I made it clear that I liked this movie, didn't I?

The movie's number one sex symbol carried a lot of films to box office success on the strength of her looks and personality. But Rita Hayworth was definitely asked to tote a lot in Tonight And Every Night, a film set during the air attacks on London about a theater that never missed a performance. There was actually such a theater as the Windmill. A whole lot of extravagant musical numbers photographed in gorgeous technicolor are held together by a plot involving Rita being the object of a campaign by Eagle Squadron RAF member Lee Bowman. Though she's warned by fellow performer and best friend Janet Blair that Bowman's a wolf in Eagle Squadron uniform, Rita plunges headlong into things. She's also got dancer Marc Platt interested in her as well. For a British set film, this cast sure had an awful lot of Americans. This film would have been so much better done across the pond with someone like Jessie Matthews or Anna Neagle starring. The numbers are nice enough though, the musical score by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn contained one song, Anywhere which got an Oscar nomination. A much better song of their's that Frank Sinatra sung in Anchors Aweigh, I Fall In Love Too Easily, was also nominated that year, but Rodgers and Hammerstein got the statue that year for It Might As Well Be Spring. Tonight And Every Night also got an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Scoring. The musical numbers are great, but the plot is pretty thin.

This is nothing so much as a prototype for London Town, i.e. Hollywood attempting disastrously to set a musical in London. Though they couldn't come out and say so the inspiration for what plot there is came from the Windmill - 'we never closed' - a striptease theatre below street level that remained open all through the blitz with Florence Bates in the role of Mrs Henderson albeit under a Jane Doe. It was virtually impossible to photograph Rita Hayworth badly but her gorgeous looks are really all this dire movie has going for it. It's also proof that Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn could actually write ho-hum numbers and is arguably by a country mile the worst score they ever penned. Lee Bowman is something of a joke as a leading man; clean-cut looks and superficial charm do not a Leading Man make. Definitely worth missing.

This is perhaps the worst movie musical ever to emerge from a major Hollywood studio. Everything about it is bad, especially the cheesy sets, the rotten script, and the utterly forgettable music. Check out the dance number with Rita Hayworth and Janet Blair in their long-johns. Poor Rita. Avoid this film unless you're into really bad flicks, just for laughs.

If anyone wants to understand why the old movie studios could not withstand the competition from television, they should study "Tonight And Every Night", which exemplifies what was wrong with the old Hollywood studio system. The film stars Rita Hayworth, one of the most charismatic and talented actresses ever to appear in movies. She is dressed by Jean Louis and photographed by Rudolph Mate. Apparently Columbia and Harry Cohn thought that was enough. It most certainly is not! The screenplay is utter rubbish. There is almost no story; the dialogue in places is embarrassing; and the scenes where Lee Bowman "pitches" Rita Hayworth are so badly written - and make the Bowman character so unappealing - that it is impossible to believe any woman would have found the man attractive. The only interesting aspect to the story is the unrequited love Marc Platt's character has for Rita's showgirl, and the way he reacts when he realises there is no hope for him. Unfortunately the screenplay does not develop this, and instead lumbers towards a cliché-ridden happy resolution between Rita and Lee Bowman. The songs have very little melody, despite having been written by Jule Styne, one the great tune-smiths of 20th Century popular music. Even worse, the dance numbers do not give Rita a chance to shine. All Jack Coles' routines are energetic, jitterbug affairs with arms and legs all over the place. There is not one elegant routine in the movie, not one moment of grace and poise. Astonishingly, although Rita had already proved in her movies with Fred Astaire that she was one of the great romantic dancers, she is not given a dance with a man - except for a few steps with Marc Platt before the camera pans away to focus on an uninteresting chorus line! As was often the case in Rita's colour movies in the 1940's, she was impeded by the make-up department who put far too much rouge on her face. Rita was in the early stages of pregnancy when she made this movie, and occasionally it shows. Her breasts are bigger than normal - no man will complain about that! - and in the "Boy I Left Behind" duet with Janet Blair, Rita's lower stomach gives the game away. "Tonight And Every Night" was not the worst film Rita made for Columbia: "Down To Earth" is far worse. "Tonight And Every Night" does, however, demonstrate how lazy and careless the old Hollywood studios were in the period before television. It would have been easy for Columbia to have worked out a proper story line, to have pointed out to Jack Cole that Rita Hayworth needed a variety of dance numbers including at least one elegant, romantic routine, and to have given her a leading man who could dance.

I confess I could only bear watching one half of this film before switching off.The producers must therefore take the blame for a complete lack of research about what it was like living in London during the German Blitzkrieg, and what life was truly like in Britain in the 1940s, while they sat in their luxury air conditioned, comfortable offices in Hollywood, 6000 miles away.I suppose after the deserved success of "Cover Girl" (1944) they thought, "Why not produce a similar movie set in London".The trouble was they had to use American actors using phony accents to give some semblance to the non existent plot.They even cast Lee Bowman again from "Cover Girl", playing a Clark Gable type part.How I hate that moustache!The script was one cliché after another.Apart from Rita's obvious dancing talent, the only enjoyable part was when the unknown male dancer at the beginning of the film, dances to a tirade by Herr Schickelgruber! For Welsh viewers it must have been irksome to see the word "England" spread all over a map of Britain which included Wales, during a dance sequence.I could only award it 4/10.To echo another UK reviewer, the producers were coy about identifying the real London theatre - "The Windmill" whose slogan was "We Never Closed" and its female impresario, Mrs Henderson, which and who "inspired" this film.

This was the first movie where Rita Hayworth was given credit above the title. It's also the film she did before "Gilda", which would be her triumph. "Tonight and Every Night" is a product of the Hollywood of the late forties, when war themes were not that common. Directed by Victor Saville, the film has some good moments and as Neil Doyle has pointed out in these pages, if you're a fan of Ms. Hayworth, this is a must see! Not that it's one of the best things she ever did on the screen, but it's a good way to spend an evening in good company. The story is based on a theater in London that never stopped operating, even in the worst days of the blitz. It's to the credit of the woman who ran the venue, May Tolliver, that she wanted to keep some sense of sanity when Londoners were going through such a rough time. Rita Hayworth looks lovely dressed by Jean Louis. Lee Bowman plays her love interest, Paul Lindy. We also see Janet Blair, Marc Platt and Florence Bates in supporting roles. Jules Stein's music is not the kind that one keeps repeating after viewing the film. The only thing that hasn't kept well is the Technicolor. The copy we saw recently has not aged well as it shows different skin tones in Ms. Hayworth. Watch it, if only to get a glimpse at the lovely Rita Hayworth!

This film is based on a real theater and theater troop during WWII. The theater never closed its doors despite the Blitz with bombs falling all around and over it. (It was an underground theater.) It's a part of England's history. This isn't the best film ever made, but certainly not the worst as some have made it out to be. It's simply a light musical mixed with drama. To see another take on this story be sure to see "Mrs. Henderson Presents" with Dame Judy Dench and Bob Hoskins. It's a fantastic film that really presents the way it was "back then." I know, because I was around then and this film brought back some good and some bad memories. DLMc

First off, I must be honest and tell you that I am not a huge fan of musicals. Sure, I have enjoyed films like GIGI and THE SOUND OF MUSIC and I also like the Astaire-Rogers films, but usually I avoid musicals because they are either very stagy or there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to be singing in the first place. So keep this in mind when reading the review. The film is about a theatre in London that remained open throughout the Blitz. Because it is a dance hall, the singing and dancing that occur look like scaled-down versions of a Ziegfeld Follies show--exactly the sort of stagy musical I dislike. However, due to a nice romance between Rita Hayworth and Lee Bowman (though it does develop way too quickly) and a few good songs (particularly the emotional and heart-wrenching one at the conclusion), the film is an amiable time-passer. However, for fans of STAR WARS, I do recommend you see this film just for one musical number featuring Miss Hayworth. Towards the very beginning, she has her hair up in weird buns just like Princess Leia!!! So you can see where they got the inspiration for this awful doo!