Kay (Betty Grable) and Barbara (Carole Landis) are a couple of sisters and waitresses down on their luck somewhere in the heart of Texas, where they’re employed at a carhop, alongside their Aunt Susan (Charlotte Greenwood), who serves as the establishment’s grouchy cook. However, their luck seems to take a momentary turn for the better when they receive notification that the recent death of a wealthy relative has equipped the three women with a hefty inheritance – but a follow-up letter confirms that, due to a variety of taxes and other legal fees, they’re left with a fraction of the fortune. However, it’s more than enough to get them down to Miami, where Kay hatches a plan to get herself a wealthy husband, knowing that many of these resorts are frequented by eligible bachelors just looking for a beautiful, vulnerable woman to take home to their (very wealthy) parents. Posing as the affluent socialite “Miss Adams”, with her sister becoming “Miss Sears”, her personal secretary, and her aunt acting as their maid, they make their way down to Florida, where they’re swept off their feet almost immediately. Kay attracts the attention of both Jeffrey Boulton II (Robert Cummings), a self-made man, and Phil O’Neil (Don Ameche), the heir to a considerable business, and the feeling is clearly mutual, as Kay sees nothing but good fortune in their futures, quite literally. However, following not too far behind them is Jack (Jack Haley), a quiet but perceptive bartender who has nothing but disdain for gold-diggers, the women who make their way to his resort purely to find a rich partner – but even he can’t help getting swept up in this elaborate scheme, becoming both the reason it frequently fails to go anyway, and one of the primary culprits for a series of good-natured accidents that draw this motley crew of individuals together.

There are some people who would consider Moon Over Miami to be trite, inconsequential fluff, a film without much depth and one that is built almost entirely on style over substance. Those individuals would be absolutely right – but this would be far from a criticism, especially since this film never claimed to be anything other than what it was. Walter Lang was a director with a long and prolific career of making films of varying qualities – some of them wonderful and exuberant works of entertaining cinema, others more intimate and personal stories. Moon Over Miami certainly belongs amongst the former category, with the story of two wayward young women and their pernickety aunt venturing to Miami in the hopes of wrangling a rich husband being fertile ground for a charming but otherwise unimportant musical comedy. Everything that made 1940s musical cinema so endearing can be found embedded in this production – upbeat song-and-dance numbers, charming performances from a reliable cast assembled from a combination of mainstream stars and character actors, and a generally joyful sense of humour that keeps everything afloat. For this reason alone, Moon Over Miami is a worthwhile film for potential viewers to seek out – it promises very little outside of being a lovable romantic comedy told through song, and if we can get behind this side of the story and become invested in the lives of these characters for the 90 minutes that they’re on screen, then the film has done exactly what it aimed to do, which is exactly what it required to be a fun, breezy exercise in classic era comedy.

Audiences eighty years ago likely flocked to see Moon Over Miami based on the stars. At the time, Betty Grable was amongst the most profitable actresses working in Hollywood, and would eventually ascend to being the highest-paid female performer employed in the industry, a position she’d hold onto for quite a while. From a modern perspective, this seems like a bewildering achievement – Grable doesn’t have the cultural cache that many of her contemporaries do, and such a fact could be seen as a strange triviality, rather than an indication of a long-lasting impact on the industry. However, one doesn’t need to be a devotee of the Golden Age of Hollywood to understand precisely why Grable was such a beloved star – she had an easygoing humour that simply flowed out of her every pore, which exuded nothing but the most pure charisma. Designed mainly as a vehicle for her talents, Moon Over Miami does very well in providing her with the platform to demonstrate her range of skills – whether as a comedienne, dancer, singer or romantic lead, she runs the gamut in this film, with everyone else essentially being the foil to her performance. This is peculiar, considering she is acting across from the wonderful Don Ameche, who is the central romantic lead, and someone who is just as endearing as Grable, especially at his peak. The pair have a remarkable chemistry with each other, as well as with the rest of the cast, which includes the very gifted Carole Landis (whose career was sadly cut short only a few years later), Robert Cummings and the effortlessly brilliant Charlotte Greenwood, who is an absolute scene-stealer. Moon Over Miami has a wonderful ensemble, and while it was more than likely Grable who attracted audiences into theatres, the entire cast holds their own and brings life to these characters and the film as a whole.

Moon Over Miami is not a particularly serious film, but it is one that is very entertaining. Lang, along with screenwriters Lynn Starling and George Seaton, constructed a delightfully irreverent tale of a group of women seeking fame and fortune, set to the backdrop of some of Florida’s most extravagant locations. The film doesn’t take itself all that seriously, and manages to constantly have a sense of humour about the story, which only lends it more credence, since we’re rarely at a loss for entertainment. Had the film tried to be a more sobering exercise in social critique, not only would it have failed dismally, but it would’ve become the very thing it is criticizing in the first place. It’s an interesting approach, and while it may not be particularly deep, it does hold some relevance, especially looking at this era in musical cinema. Designed almost entirely to be a starring vehicle for Grable, the film is made to showcase the talents of the actors, with simple but effective musical sequences keeping us engaged, and the punctuation of an upbeat comedy-of-manners giving us the insights into the lives of these characters that we so frequently crave. It’s not the most effective film in terms of comedy, romance or musical (since there were countless better entries into each individual genre produced at the time), but it’s far from lacklustre, especially in how it is built on a firm foundation of having fun, rather than taking itself particularly seriously. Lang had a penchant for these kinds of stories, and would frequently deviate to giving the audience something to remember in terms of boldly entertaining moments – and there is never a shortage of gorgeous, striking scenarios in Moon Over Miami, which only increases the joy of immersing ourselves into this charming version of the world.

The 1940s are filled to the brim with films like Moon Over Miami, charming musical comedies with big stars and middling stories, and which disappear just as fast as they arrived. They can be considered a dime-a-dozen, especially when there isn’t anything particularly special about the story, the design of the film or the performances given by the actors, which tends to lead these films to become somewhat forgotten after a while. However, this only makes the experience of rediscovering one of them all the more poignant, since there is a certain enchanting quality to these films that make them timeless, even if they don’t compare to more notable productions from the time. They’re created not to change cinema or impart a particularly deep message, but rather to invite us into its world, where the laws of logic are suspended, since there will always be a happy ending on the other side of the zany scenarios. It’s a disorienting experience when a film like this isn’t really grounded within reality – at its best moments, Moon Over Miami is so effervescent, there is a frequent fear it might just fly away overall – but this is all part of the neverending joy of seeing a film like this, one that believes so deeply in its own upbeat nature, we can’t resist the infectious joy that comes along with it. Occurring somewhere between obscurity and a small-scale classic cherished by a tiny but dedicated group of supporters, Moon Over Miami is a lovable excursion into the past, giving us a chance to look into a time when the biggest worry was whether someone was going to marry the self-made millionaire or the sleepy-headed heir – and this film proves to be escapism in its more pure, unadulterated form.