With Easter coming up I started looking round for films to watch with my dad over the holiday season.Taking a look at a DVD seller page,I spotted the first ever 3D Musical Western (!) ,which led to me getting ready to meet the redheads of Seattle.The plot:Running a campaign in his newspaper to get Johnny Kisco's salon shutdown, Vance Edmonds newspaper business gets burnt to the ground by Kisco's henchmen.Thanks to their being a gold rush in the area,Edmounds writes a letter to his family telling them to come down.Shortly after sending the letter,Vance is killed by Kisco's handyman (who have not been ordered by Kisco to burn the building,or kill Vance.) Getting the letter, Mrs. Edmonds gathers her daughters and sets off to the city to be reunited with her husband. Arriving in the city completely unaware,the Edmonds soon receive some bad news. View on the film:Whilst the transfer from 3D to 2D, (the 3D version was shown at the premiere,then never shown again,talk about value for money!)does slightly mute the colours,co-writer/(along with Daniel Mainwaring & George Worthing Yates) director Lewis R. Foster and cinematographer Lionel Lindon are able to find glitz in the redheads.Foster greets the girls in rosy blues and greens,whilst Lindon offers a glimpse to the 3D take with a depth of field which give the salons a touch of glamour,and the great snow covered mountain final a frosty atmosphere.Joined by sweet songs from Sidney Cutner and Leo Shuken,the screenplay by Foster/Mainwaring and Yates neatly blends the light Musical glaze with sawn-off shots from the Western.Entering the town all elegant,the writers rub the Musical girls against the outlaw,double-dealing world of the west,by wonderfully throwing their limelight dreams into the seedy smoke of the salons.Keeping the family in line, Agnes Moorehead gives a very good performance as the level-headed Mrs. Edmonds,whilst Gene Barry terrifically reveals Kisco trying to keep his outlaw life hidden,as Kisco's head is turned by the girls from Seattle.

Paramount's Dollar Bills, William Pine and William Thomas continued putting out films in the Fifties as they did in the Forties for Paramount's B picture unit. Only they were given a bit more bucks to play with and some bigger stars in the Fifties. For Those Redheads From Seattle they got not only color, but also 3-D making it the first musical released in 3-D.With some elements of The Harvey Girls as part of the story, Pine-Thomas could have used some better songs for the score. I noted that several different writers contributed to this one. Usually you have only one team, maybe an interpolation from another writer for the score. But in Those Redheads From Seattle it was all original material. It was like some various songwriting teams just opened the trunk for some unused material and sold it to Paramount.As one of those redheads is Rhonda Fleming who is the oldest of Agnes Moorehead's four daughters who have come to the city of Dawson in the Klondike Gold Rush you certainly have the redhead covered. Agnes is a redhead her and so are Teresa Brewer and the Bell Sisters except one of them is a blond and wonders how she got in this family. No exceptions were allowed in the Day Family in Life With Father. They got a last letter from their husband and father who ran the newspaper in Dawson and is leading a fight to clean up the bad elements in Dawson. Then one of those bad elements plugs Frank Wilcox, but not before his family has pulled up from Seattle to join him. Another of those bad elements is the owner of the largest gambling palace in Dawson Gene Barry. He's thought of as the one responsible for Wilcox no longer being among the living. He has the whole film to prove himself innocent and gain one of the daughters as a bride.Taking care of the musical chores are Guy Mitchell who sings in Barry's establishment and Teresa Brewer who would like to. Nothing here that stands out in the score. 3-D was also used by MGM for Kiss Me Kate. If you can see that in 3-D I'd recommend it before Those Redheads From Seattle.

In 1953, while so many good musicals, and not just at MGM, are integrating their scores, plots, and production designs, this Paramount oddity is a real throwback. All the songs, by a variety of hands, are "diegetic," i.e., stage-presentation numbers that have nothing to do with plot. Which may be just as well, since the plot is such a schizophrenic affair. It's about mom Agnes Moorehead (in an uncharacteristically humorless, uninteresting performance) squiring her four daughters to the Yukon in 1898, not aware that their dad has been murdered, and their falsely blaming saloon owner Gene Barry for it. The motivations are as scattershot as the intended 3D effects; when prettiest daughter Rhonda Fleming ends up with Barry, Moorehead glows with delight, even though she's hated him for most of the movie, because, well, it's time for fadeout and we need a happy ending. Teresa Brewer, with the best songs, is spunky and appealing, and Guy Mitchell, with a lovely voice, is more effective than he was the following year in another odd Paramount musical, "Red Garters." The tone's now-somber, now-boisterous, and the western and musical motifs do not blend well.

The attractive thing about this movie is the presence of Teresa Brewer, in her only film. So if you're a fan this is a must see. Secondly, how often do you judge a musical as a great movie in itself? The plot is usually there to support the music and the stars. That's the way I look at it, so I'm not hard on it. I know there are fans of Rhonda Fleming too, and the other stars. They appear attractive in color and the music is fine, especially when Teresa is on stage as a showgirl singing Baby Baby Baby. That was a hit for her that year. The Bell Sisters sing one, and so does Guy Mitchell. Teresa also sings Mr Banjo Man and a duet with Guy of It Must Have Been You All The Time. This film has recently been prepared for a 3-D video release that has not occurred, and there have been a couple of limited theatrical preview showings recently. Never been on video. Can be seen online in some places or as a TV recording. As of 2017 there is a DVD and Bluray 3D release. Better get yours before they are out of stock.