Director: Phil Karlson
Although most remembered for her dancing pictures with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers was a performer of tremendous range. Not only was she an accomplished comedienne, but as a dramatic talent she was more than formidable. Her Oscar-winning role in Kitty Foyle is the place that most people turn to in order to make that defense, but Gregory La Cava’s Primrose Path perhaps best exemplifies how great Ginger could be when dialed down. If one is looking to become acquainted with the extent of her dynamism, there is perhaps no better individual example than Tight Spot. A thoroughly lovable melodrama, Ginger begins the picture as a wise-cracking moll, before eventually settling in as a tragic figure with a haunted past. She plays a prison inmate who is given a reprieve by Edward G. Robinson’s district attorney when asked to testify against a mobster. The bulk of the film is confined to a single hotel room, wherein she stalls in conceding to give the testimony while romantically teasing a lieutenant played by Brian Keith. At 44, Ginger looks great and, in her games of seduction, is as sexy as she’s ever been, and as the love interest, Keith has a hard edge and affectingly plays up his own interior conflict which appears late in the picture. The plot is cliche, yes, but it is a difficult film to root against, and it certainly gave Ginger one of the better acting opportunities of her later years.
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