Down Argentine Way (1940)

An American heiress (Betty Grable) and a South American playboy (Don Ameche) find their romance threatened by an old family feud. Thing aren't helped by their going behind his father's (Henry Stephenson) back and racing the father's prize jumping horse. Directed by Irving Cummings (THE DOLLY SISTERS), this featherweight vivid Technicolor musical was Betty Grable's first starring role and the beginning of her reign as the biggest female star of the 1940s placing ten times in the top box office polls (a feat later equaled by Doris Day, Barbra Streisand and Julia Roberts but not surpassed). South American music was all the rage in the 1940s and the film's "exotic" locale (although entirely filmed in Hollywood) and Carmen Miranda in her American film debut made this one of the year's most popular films. As to the film itself, it's moderately entertaining and passes uneventfully. Fox's musicals (with the possible exception of STATE FAIR) never equaled the prestigious output of MGM. With Charlotte Greenwood, J. Carrol Naish, Leonid Kinskey and the fabulous Nicholas Brothers inserted into the film (so their numbers could be cut out in the South).