One Christmastime during the early 1980s, the British TV channel BBC2 (if I remember correctly) screened an extensive series of Technicolor MGM musicals throughout the holiday season, which Mom and I watched avidly - Mom recalling how she had originally enjoyed seeing them many years ago at the cinema when she was a young woman and I watching many of them for the very first time in rapt delight - On the Town, Anchors Aweigh, That Night in Rio, Down Argentine Way, The Gang's All Here, and many others too, showcasing such musical greats of the Golden Age of Cinema as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Vera-Ellen, Ann Miller, Betty Grable, the incomparable Carmen Miranda, and many more.
However, they do say that you can have too much of even a good thing, and towards the end of the run my interest had started to wane. The very last film in it was billed as being a rare showing on TV, and the film itself was one that I'd never even heard of before - Yolanda and the Thief, starring Lucille Bremer and Fred Astaire in the respective roles. Consequently, I decided to give it a miss, feeling sure that it would be reshown at some later date on one of the TV channels - but it never was. Not once during the past 36-37 years have I ever seen this movie included in any TV listing on any channel. Perhaps it has been, but if so I've not seen it. In any event, Yolanda and the Thief has certainly lived up to its 'rare TV showing' description in that long-bygone, early-1980s Christmas season of musicals. Consequently, I've always regretted missing the opportunity to view this film back then, and its unusual, memorable title has stayed firmly implanted in my mind for almost 40 years.
Imagine my delight, then, when towards the end of last year I found it on DVD, and bought it straight away. And on 18 April 2020, finally - finally! - I sat down and watched it, Yolanda and the Thief - the musical that (so nearly) got away. Directed by none other than Vincente Minnelli, and originally released by MGM in 1945, it proved to be a frothy romantic fantasy that is a veritable feast for the eyes with its vivid colours throughout and also for the ears, filled with delightful tuneful songs (remember them??) composed by Harry Warren with lyrics by Alan Freed (who also produced this movie), as well as plenty of dazzling dance sequences in which, as always, Fred Astaire excels.
Lucille Bremer plays a convent-raised young woman named Yolanda, newly discharged on her 18th birthday into the outside world as the heiress of a multi-million-pound company in the small, fictitious Latin American country of Potria. In contrast, Fred Astaire is a young conman named Johnny Riggs, who is determined to steal her fortune away, playing upon her cloistered upbringing by pretending to be her guardian angel in order to persuade the trusting, religious Yolanda to sign everything over to him.
Needless to say, however, being an MGM musical it all turns out well for everyone eventually, and there is a wonderful twist to this whimsical tale near the end too. So yes, a very pleasant way to pass a couple of hours, but I wondered throughout whether, being something of a rarity, Yolanda and the Thief was a movie that Mom had ever watched. Despite being a massive musicals fan who had nurtured in me from an early age what became my own abiding love for this genre, she had never mentioned having seen it, yet it is one that she certainly would have adored.
It's times like this that bring home to me so starkly that she has truly gone forever, not just for a time, but for always, that there'll never come a day again when we will be able to watch this or any other film together, that I'll be able to ask her whether she'd seen it when she was younger. A door has closed behind me that I can never re-open and walk back through; nor is it one of the however many or few doors that await my opening in the future. And never has this grim fact hit home more than right now, living alone and fearfully while a lethal plague lurks everywhere. It is good, though, that I have finally watched this film, another loose ending tied down in place at last, another of my life's journeys satisfactorily concluded.
If you're wondering whether to pay a visit to Yolanda and the Thief yourself, be sure to click here to check out a superb original trailer for this delightful musical. Also, click here to enjoy one of Fred and Lucille's most spectacular dance performances; here for a dream-like fantasy song-and-dance scene again featuring both of them; and here for a colourfully surreal routine from Fred.
And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
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