DOWN TO EARTH stars Rita Hayworth, 28 and dancing up a 1947 storm in Technicolor. That alone could be enough to recommend a viewing, and for some her beauty, zest, sex appeal and dynamic way with fluid gyrations are sufficient to invest 101 minutes of earth-time to see one of Hollywood’s legendary knockouts strut her stuff; she wasn’t dubbed ‘The Love Goddess’ for nuthin’. Alas, the show around her has an unfortunate case of the blahs. Hayworth later said this was her least favorite film.

‘Terpsichore’ (Hayworth), one of the Nine Muses of Olympus, is peeved to find that down on Earth a Broadway producer (Larry Parks as ‘Danny Miller’) is staging a musical that portrays the Muses in a satiric, unflattering light. She receives permission from angel overseer ‘Mr. Jordan’ to appear below and fix the play. Naturally during the production she takes over from the brassy lead actress (Adele Jurgens), dances like, well, an angel, and wins Danny’s love. But she also falls for him, and that won’t do with the universal master plan.

A musical-comedy-fantasy sequel to the 1941 hit Here Comes Mr. Jordan, it was directed by Alexander Hall, who had piloted the earlier picture, and has a screenplay by Edwin Blum (Stalag 17) and Don Hartman (three ‘Road’ pictures and three Danny Kaye hits), taking characters from Harry Segall’s 1938 play It Was Like That, which became Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Hall was joined by two great pros (James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton) reprising their characters from the earlier movie. Jordan was played before by Claude Rains, but in this he’s replaced by Roland Culver, and it’s a liability, as Culver didn’t seem to get that playing someone who isn’t living doesn’t mean you act like you’re not alive; he’s so stiff he needs a mortician. A bigger debit is Larry Parks. A year before, when Hayworth scorched as Gilda, Parks jumped out of assembly line pictures into the lead in The Jolson Story, the year’s 3rd biggest hit, getting him an Oscar nomination. But he’s prairie flat in this, and there’s zip chemistry with Hayworth. More demerits accrue because the script doesn’t provide laughs, and a more serious turn in the second half fizzles. The songs are unmemorable (Hayworth, Parks and Jurgens are all dubbed, too) leaving only Rita’s excellent dance moves and some snazzy costumes shown to good effect under Rudolph Maté’s cinematography. The color is swell, she’s gorgeous.

Grosses came to $6,800,000, #40 at the ’47 tills. In the wings: Marc Platt, George Macready (doing another slimy casino owner as in Gilda, but with little of the flair), William Frawley, James Burke, Jean Willes, Myron Healey and Carol Haney. It inspired Xanadu, but that’s not exactly high praise.