After Tony Martin was discharged from the Navy in 1942, and not under the most favorable circumstances, he tried to rekindle his then dormant career as a movie star by founding a production company. Having raised some money on his own, he convinced Universal to put up the rest. To showcase his talents as an actor/singer, he chose to remake a remake of a 1937 "Pepe Le Moko," a French film with Jean Gabin that a year later became the American "Algiers" with Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr. ("Come wiz me to ze Casbah.") Martin was not a bad actor, a sort of sexier Ronny Reagan who could sing, but as a producer he (or the director John Berry) made a fatal mistake of trying to mix two genres. This 1948 film is neither melodrama nor musical, but something odd in between. The tunes by the great Harold Arlen, one of which ("For Every Man There is a Woman") is now a classic, don't seem to fit in with the rest of the film. Listening to Martin croon in the midst of an otherwise dramatic scene is like having Rick burst into a chorus of "As Time Goes By" to remind Ilsa of how much he once loved her before he ended up in Casablanca. The Swedish actress Marta Toren, then being groomed to be the next Bergman but looking more like Alida Valli, is lovely and perfectly acceptable in the Lamarr role, but although she could act she often speaks as if she was being dubbed by Zsa Zsa Gabor. Yvonne De Carlo, a great beauty and a fine actress whose talents were never fully recognized, is her luscious self as the hometown girl Martin discards for the sexy tourist. Eartha Kitt, then a member of Katherine Dunham's company featured in the film, can be seen very briefly at approx. 1:19:20 dancing in and out of frame. (This was her first movie.) The greatest plus in the film is, as always, the presence of the incomparable villain and charmer Peter Lorre as the police inspector. Unlike Tony Martin, Lorre could do no wrong. To give Tony his due, in the same year this film was made and flopped at the box-office, the baritone ended up marrying Cyd Charisse. Excellent recompense.
Review of Casbah
