Snow Gets in Your Eyes (1938) Online

Ski competition in a department store in New York City? That's what this short is about and you'll have to see to appreciate the transition from outside ski slopes to the department store ramp, which is handled with skill.

The plot of this musical comedy two-reeler is simple: A guy who sells sausages at the department store is enamored of a salesgirl who works down the aisle from him. Hoping to impress her, he takes ski lessons so he can win the competition. Sandwiched between the light comedy sketches are two delightful musical treats, "Girl Wanted," and, would you believe, "The Harlem Yodel!"

The real stars of the show are the wonderful Dandridge Sisters, Dorothy Dandridge, Vivian Dandridge, and Etta Jones, each uncredited. The beautiful Dorothy Dandridge was to go on to a highly successful movie career including a nomination for the Academy Award for her role in "Carmen Jones," not long before her tragic death from a drug overdose.

The title is derived from lame yet harmless attempts at slapstick humor, centering on Charles Judels as Schlitz and Chester Clute as King Winter who gets fake "snow in his eyes" when he attempts to introduce the competition. "Snow Gets in Your Eyes" came out over a decade before the popular hit tune, "Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes," dominated the nation's musical charts and thus is not a parody of that song but rather a pun on "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," from the 1933 musical, "Roberta."

Virginia Grey was a long time favorite of MGM's Louis B. Mayer, she appeared in dozens of MGM films and was at one time briefly linked with Clark Gable.

She gets a chance to star in her own short subject here with a pair of forgotten romantic rivals, all working in a department store. It's wintertime and the store is sponsoring a ski jumping contest in the store. One very nice set was built for this.

In any event her two rivals, Roger Converse and Hudson Shotwell get to jump to win a store prize and the fair lady's hand.

Charles Judels is the officious store manager who backs the wrong horse and ends up hanging around so to speak.

The short subject crammed a few musical numbers in its running time including three by the Dandridge Sisters before lead Dorothy went out on her own.

It's a pleasant 20 or so minutes with a few laughs also at the store manager's expense.

Described as a short musical romance, "Snow Gets in Your Eyes" is short on romance and short on music, though the Dandridge Sisters appear briefly. The comedy also comes up short. This is a rather uninspiring twenty minute film that revolves around an indoor skiing competition which includes no suspense or prodigious talent.

Really there is not much to recommend this film. No laugh out loud moments, no tear-jerking scenes, no hum-worthy melodies.

Not exactly a witty slapstick comedy short, this one is strictly corn from start to finish.

VIRGINIA GREY is the pretty sales clerk who has ROGER CONVERSE in love with her at an adjoining sales booth. The whole story takes place during an indoor ski event. Both of the main contenders for the prize are smitten with Grey. Converse brushes up on ski technique to win at the indoor ski carnival, but not before the other guy tries to win by deceptively coating Converse's skis with soap.

A few silly sight gags can't overcome the overall weakness of the script--such as CHESTER CLUTE getting hit in the face by artificial snowballs as he attempts to be King Winter, but the whole story is just a clumsy attempt at combining comedy with a couple of musical interludes.

Roger Converse sings an uninspired song called "Girl Wanted" which is repeated at the happy ending. VIRGINIA GREY gets to bat her eyes in her usual flirtatious manner while being romanced by two men. And a group of black entertainers get to do a swing number--in the middle of which I recognized DOROTHY DANDRIDGE as one of the black girl singers before she became a name.

Mindless fluff, weakly executed.

This story confused me a bit with the results of the ski jumping contest, because the second set of jumps by the principal competitors, Tommy Bradford (Roger Converse) and Buddy Brooks (Hudson Shotwell), were both in the forty foot range, while their first attempts were in the neighborhood of seventy five feet. Tommy won both, and in the first jump went ahead by six and three quarter inches. It was a head scratcher, but not enough to make me want to go back and watch it again.

Probably one's best takeaway here is listening to the Dandridge Sisters with Etta Jones singing a couple of catchy numbers, including 'Girl Wanted' and 'The Harlem Yodel'. Besides that, whenever I see one of these older films, I'm on the lookout for unusual product placement, and this one had Ritz Crackers and Bisquick on a display shelf behind the sausage making counter where Tommy kept an eye on his prospective girlfriend June (Virginia Grey). So both products have been around at least eighty years!

The title of the short is obviously a take-off on the popular song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", set to a wintry theme. Seeing a downhill ski slope constructed inside the All City Department Store was a bit unusual for the era, making me wonder how the store was able to afford such an extravagance. Particularly when a pretty good day at June's cosmetics counter resulted in total sales of twenty two dollars! Well, that probably took care of the snowflakes.