Barbara Stanwyck managed to elevate nearly every film and television show she ever did. The earliest film I saw her in was "The Miracle Woman" from 1931. I just saw "Baby Face" and I own copies of "The Thorn Birds", "Stella Dallas" and this film. "Lady of Burlesque" is a wonderful, atmospheric depiction of an bygone era, complete with Stanwyck doing some amazing dance moves. Some people have criticized the music score as being second-rate, but that is what it SUPPOSED to be. Burlesque wasn't Ziegfeld. Men went to see the girls in various stages of undress, not hear Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. The music and the corny jokes were incidental to the "action" on stage, and it was not for nothing that Arthur Lange's musical score was nominated for an Acadamy Award. The mystery story is well-told and the atmosphere is added to by an excellent supporting cast, with Iris Adrian being a standout. After seeing this wonderfully entertaining film you will feel like you have been whisked back in time to an era long-gone.

This movie shows how much the director matters in ensemble pieces. Wellman was one of those guys who seemed incapable of making a bad movie, even when stuck with limited resources and censorship, as in this case. This is basically a one-set film and it was shot under more or less double censorship (Code and wartime). But it's highly entertaining, considering what they couldn't show. (If I had been stuck in North Africa or the South Pacific in 1943 I would much sooner have seen this than those dreadful patriotic movies like THOUSANDS CHEER and SO PROUDLY WE HAIL or even CASABLANCA.) It's full of watchable funny girls of the kind that all but vanished (into the kitchen) after Pearl Harbor. The murder-mystery element is played the right way-- completely unseriously. Stanwyck is totally appealing, and Stephanie Bachelor ("Only tramps work in Toledo!") is one bombshell of a funny girl. Iris Adrian, Marion Martin, and Victoria Faust all make a big impression. Pinky Lee gets to do his schtick, including some tricky dancing, and O'Shea is good as the baggy-pants comic who's after Stanwyck. Both the writing (by Gunn) and editing are snappy (and witty: I love that quick cutaway to 'the Princess' reading her fan mail) and nobody just shows up and reads lines. I doubt anyone could have filmed this better in 1943.

LADY OF BURLESQUE,an old humble screwball mystery ,very clumsily made, has one thing of real interest—Mrs. Stanwyck, at her rather hottest, as a sex—bomb. As for the rest, it's a quite insipid screwball comedy, unpretentious B slapdash. I find this genre as admissible as the sleazy fancily violent thrillers of the '70s.Mrs. Stanwyck gives a rather standard performance as a wisecracker ;she makes such nice remarks about how men were looking at her ankles when she was 11;today, such confessions would sound utterly unacceptable. But LADY OF … was made in a time when people were having so much more fun ….LADY OF BURLESQUE is about a couple of murders in a burlesque theater ; Mrs. Stanwyck is the Colombina, and an Irishman is her Pierrot; hence the screwball. The execution is, as I already stated, silly and clumsy.Balast.

This is a truly amazing film. Considering the adult content of the film, it's amazing that it was made during the era where the Production Code was so rigidly enforced AND it's amazing that some major Hollywood talent associated themselves with such a sleazy and silly film. The movie is directed by the very well respected William Wellman--the same man responsible for such classics as ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. In the starring role is Barbara Stanwyck--an A-list actress in a decidedly B-list film! So why is the film so sleazy? Well, the setting is a burlesque house and the original title for the story was THE G-STRING MURDERS! While people are killed in a variety of ways, one is found with a G-string wrapped around her throat. Additionally, the women in the film all look very cheap and act like tramps--with lots of cat fights and juicy dialog! In many ways, this film looks like a 1930s Pre-Code or Exploitation Film--not the product of a mainstream studio during the rather stuffy 1940s! How this actually got made and was allowed to be released is a mystery--as well as how they got very respected talent to appear in a poorly written and shabby production.Had this movie not starred Stanwyck and been directed by Wellman, I really doubt if it would have been widely released, as the film looks very cheap and suffers from a rather dull script. In fact, I doubt that a poverty row studio like Monogram would have been proud of the product! The bottom line is that this is a salacious film and it's a great curiosity piece. However, once you get past seeing talented people doing their best to ruin their careers, there really isn't much this film has to offer as far as entertainment value goes. It isn't sleazy enough to appeal to adult film fans and it's just crude enough to make it a bit of a guilty pleasure--nothing more. A bizarre and sub-par film.