TAKE ME TO TOWN (1953) C 81m. dir: Douglas Sirk

w/Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, Lee Aaker

Good fun with Sheridan at the peak of her comedy finesse as a dance hall girl by the name of Vermillion O'Toole (shades of Scarlet O'Hara). Sirk has happy memories of making TMTT: "It was a little lyrical poem to the American Western past." It was part of a planned trilogy of "little American stories" (completed by HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL? and MEET ME AT THE FAIR). This film was early in Sirk's career with Universal, and it's his first with his superb director of photography, Russell Metty, who filmed the later great melodramas. Sirk was especially happy to work with Sheridan: "She had real presence, a wonderful glow. And there was some sadness about her, underlying the gaity of the part, which I think enhanced her performance to a discriminating eye. At any rate, I thought in this little picture she was at the same time less and more than she had been before. She maybe had lost in sex-appeal, and gained in a human one. This movie was something of a farewell to cinema for her." (Quotes from Jon Halliday's Sirk on Sirk )