Duchess of Idaho Reviews

The worst Esther Williams films make the mistake of keeping her out of the water for far too long, and Duchess of Idaho makes that major mistake. Aside from the opening and closing sequences, Williams is kept out of the pool, instead she spends a lot of time in a ski-lodge stuck in a love triangle with Van Johnson (her frequent co-star) and John Lund. This is formulaic to point where, in Williams own words; it becomes “cinematic déjà vu.”

The story sees Williams seducing her best friend’s boss (John Lund) in order to get him to go running to her friend’s (Paula Raymond) waiting embrace, along the way Williams runs into Johnson, and the already complicated love entanglements get even knottier. The needlessly convoluted charades are hard to take seriously when it’s delivered in such a ho-hum style. Not to mention that Williams isn’t playing to her strengths here. Playing a plucky, upbeat sweetheart is where Williams shines, and this isn’t exactly playing to her personality type. Later films would explore a feistier side to Williams, one that was immensely appealing, and a little more of that would have gone a long way here.

Where Duchess of Idaho excels in its final form is in the cutaway numbers. The opening and closing water ballets aren’t at the level of Million Dollar Mermaid, Neptune’s Daughter, or Dangerous When Wet, but they’re just as good as those found in On an Island with You or Ziegfeld Follies. Also worth a look are the two musical interludes by the guest performers, one a quick-footed tap dance by Eleanor Powell, and the other has Lena Horne performing “Baby Come Out of the Clouds.” Johnson also delivers some solid musical numbers, but the best has to be his duet with Connie Haines and the Jubilaires on “Let’s Choo Choo to Idaho.”

Duchess of Idaho is pure formula, delivered as middling as it sounds, but modestly charming. Not the worst of the Williams vehicles, that is probably Easy to Wed, but definitely only of interest to her super-fans. Duchess of Idaho would have worked much better as a one-off episode for a sitcom, or maybe as a thirty minute short film. In her scenes with Van Johnson, Duchess of Idaho reveals what could have been a genial, light-weight musical comedy if most of the fat had been trimmed.