Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: That Girl! Edition, Part I

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's All Go To The Movies

That Girl! Edition, Part I

This week's Let's All Go To The Movies is all about 'that girl'. You know the one! The one whose essence can instantly be captured with one or two words before attaching the word 'girl'. Sure, she's a full-blooded woman (in most cases), but let's keep it young and vital and grant her 'girl' status anyway. 

What makes her tick? And what sells tickets? 

Let's pop some corn, grab a seat on the aisle and take a peek at this week's selection of fine films.

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Wise Girl

(1937)

(A snooty, high-society heiress goes undercover to find her young nieces -her deceased sister's children, who are enjoying a Bohemian lifestyle with their artist uncle. Once she finds them, she discovers their lifestyle is fun and free from the constraints her country-club life burdens her with. But she decides to take the uncle to court anyway to free him from the kids so he can paint.)

(This romantic comedy film was directed by Leigh Jason and stars Miriam Hopkins, Ray Milland and Walter Abel.) 

(Historically, there's a bit of a disagreement about how well the film did at the box office. One source claims that RKO studio records show a loss of $114,000. While another source states it had gross sales of $1.6 million against a budget of $448,000. A case of creative accounting, perhaps?) 

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Nice Girl?

(1941)

(A young woman finds herself attracted to one of her father's business partners who comes to town to give her father a scholarship for his dietary studies.)

(This musical, based on a play by Phyllis Dugann, was directed by William A. Seiter, and stars Deanna Durbin, Franchot Tone, Walter Brennan, Robert Stack, and Robert Benchley.)

(There were three finales filmed. In the US version, for the final big number, Durbin sings Thank You America - a song which didn't become a hit despite it being released as a single on Decca Records.) 

(Since World War II was raging in Europe - in fact, the Battle of Britain had concluded just days before filming began - the British version has her singing the patriotic favorite, There'll Always Be an England, with Durbin singing in front of both the Union Jack and the US flag. Durbin had a huge fan base in England who knew that Durbin's parents were English immigrants.)

(While the Latin American version has Durbin singing a rendition of Thank You America in Spanish.)

(Three child stars from 1938's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer - Tommy Kelly, Ann Gillis, and Marcia Mae Jones - all appear in this film, now playing teenage friends of Durbin's.)

(In the original script Dubin's character was to marry Stack's at the end, but then the draft was introduced. The story was adjusted so he was drafted.)
 

Deanna Durbin and Robert Stack

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Honky Tonk Girl

(1941)

AKA Hitchhike To Hell / Highway Hell

"Tainted lives sold down the river of sin for a few pieces of silver!)

"One night of bliss - a lifetime of regret!)

"Are you guilty? They must be told"

"Condemned for life and eternity!"

"Forbidden to live with decent society. Sin, shame and sorrow!"

(A rural pimp works a stable of girls up and down the highway, but he has bigger plans. He sets his sights on the Wagon Wheel Saloon and Cabins, hoping to convert it into a brothel. Standing in his way? A morally upstanding business owner and his daughter!)  

"She's the jive girl men meet only on the sly!"

"It's adult fun."

(Whiskey and fast cars lead an innocent young girl into a life of prostitution and murder.)

"Go'in my way mister?"

"Pretty young girls selling their innocence for cash!"

"It dares to tell the truth!"

(Florence Lundeen's debut. Lundeen was born on February 9, 1922 in Los Angeles.  A bit player, she appeared in four films and died at the age of 38, on  January 23 1961.)

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Cover Girl

(1944)

"The most brilliant musical of our time!"

(A vivacious young chorus girl wins a beauty contest and becomes a celebrated cover girl, endangering her romance with her boyfriend, who manages the club.)

(This musical romantic comedy film  was directed by Charles Vidor and stars Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. It proved to be one of the most popular musicals during the war years.)

 

 

(Devised as a showcase for Hayworth, the film features lavish costumes, eight dance routines for Hayworth, and songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin; the most popular of which was Long Ago (and Far Away). 

"The ten best musicals of the year rolled into one!"

"Too thrilling for words - so they set it to music, romance, dance and song."

(Columbia Pictures originally wanted Warner Bros. star Dennis Morgan, but when Gene Kelly's project at MGM, Dragon Seed, was postponed, MGM extended their loan of Kelly to Columbia - but only if Columbia Pictures surrendered screen rights to the musical hit Best Foot Forward. Columbia's production head, Harry Cohn, was opposed to using Kelly, but  the producer signed him on anyway, promising Kelly he could choreograph all the numbers, something MGM, up to that point, had never allowed.)

(Columbia gave Kelly almost complete control over the making of  the film. He removed several of the soundstage walls so that he, Hayworth, and Silvers could dance along an entire street in one take. He also used trick photography so that he could dance with his own reflection which was achieved using superimposition, giving his double a ghost-like quality. Film historians consider this film as Kelly's breakthrough, where he hit his stride in a musical, foreshadowing the best of his future work.)

(This was the first Technicolor musical for Columbia Pictures and their biggest-grossing film of 1944. It proved so popular with audiences that it was held over for multiple weeks in many small town movie houses across America)

  (Encouraged by the success of Cover Girl, Columbia purchased the film rights to Pal Joey, which Kelly had done on Broadway, in the hopes of reteaming Kelly and Hayworth. However, MGM, who now realized the value of Kelly, refused to loan him out, so the film was made with Sinatra instead.)

(This was Hayworth's fourth musical. Her singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. During the middle of shooting, she eloped with Orson Welles. Coincidentally, the film's wedding scene was shot on that same day.)

(The studio wanted Lauren Bacall to make an appearance as a Harper's Bazaar cover girl, but instead was cast in 1944's To Have and Have Not opposite Bogart at Warner Bros. making her a huge star.)

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FBI Girl

(1951)

"Woman... on a man-hunt!"

(A governor who plans on running for a senate seat seeks out the help of a local mob boss to prevent the FBI from discovering he's a convicted murderer. A low-level FBI employee is recruited to steal the incriminating file, but when she ends up dead, it triggers an investigation leading the FBI straight to the governor's mansion.)

(This film noir was directed by William A. Berke, and stars Cesar Romero, George Brent and Audrey Totter.)

(Totter was a contract player at MGM, appearing in such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice  and Lady In The Lake. As the 1950's progressed, her type of bad girl roles fell out of favor with audiences, leading to the end of her film career. But, she had no regrets, once saying: "The bad girls were so much fun to play. I wouldn't have wanted to play... good-girl parts.")

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Golden Girl

(1951)

(Working her way across America during the Civil War, a sixteen year-old s singer/dancer strives to become more and more popular.)

(This musical western was directed by Lloyd Bacon and stars Mitzi Gaynor, Dale Robertson, Dennis Day and James Barton.)

(The original song, Never, as sung by Dennis Day in the film, was nominated for an Academy Award.)

(The picture is loosely based on the life of entertainer Lotta Crabtree, 1847–192, who was known as 'The Golden Girl'.)

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Roadhouse Girl

(1953)

AKA: Marilyn

"Beautiful, but bad."

"Some guys learned the hard way... for one moment with her, they gambled their lives."

(When a handsome drifter is hired by the owner of a garage as a mechanic, the new employee quickly develops a thing for his boss's wife. Sensing something's up, the owner confronts the drifter... and pays with his life! The wife becomes complicit once she helps cover-up the crime - an action witnessed by her maid. The trio hit the road and end up running a dead-end bar. A wealthy businessmen promises to lend them some money, erroneously believing that the woman will return the favor. When that doesn't turn out to be the case, he, and his money hit the road. Fed up with the woman's behavior, the drifter takes off, too. And when the maid has finally had enough of her employer's self-centered ways... the woman finds herself broke and abandoned.)   

(Released in the UK as Marilyn, this film noir was directed by Wolf Rilla, and stars Sandra Dorne and Maxwell Reed. Critics couldn't help but notice the strong similarities to another classic film noir, 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice.)

(Also known as Sandra Holt - she married actor Patrick Holt - Dorne was known as the B-film version of Diana Dors. As a platinum blonde, she was cast in a slew of B-films in the late 1940's and early 50's. She trained at the Rank Organization's 'charm school'.)

"No escape... from this kind of woman!"

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Undersea Girl

(1957)

AKA: Aqua Dive Girl

(A female reporter, with the help of a navy investigator, and a police detective, uncovers a plot by a local gang to loot a purposely scuttled ship.)

(This crime thriller, released by  by Allied Artists Pictures on September 22, 1957 was directed by John Peyser, written by Arthur V. Jones and stars Mara Corday, Pat Conway, Florence Marly, Dan Seymour, Ralph Clanton and Myron Healey.)

(Corday, whose name came from a bongo player who called her Marita when she was working as an usher at the Mayan Theater and a bottle of perfume, is what's considered a bona fide cult film figure. The showgirl/model began her film career with 1951's Two Tickets To Broadway. Her breakthrough role was in 1955's Tarantula, a film in which Clint Eastwood appeared as a fighter pilot - a meeting which would prove very beneficial for Corday in the future. She'd go on to star in a string of similar projects.)

Maria Corday

(Corday proved to be a a popular pinup girl, appearing in numerous men's magazines throughout the 1950's. In 1958, she was selected as Playboy's October Playmate of the month.)

(In 1954 she met and married actor Richard Long. A few years after his death in 1974, old pal Clint Eastwood came calling, casting her in his 1977 film, The Gauntlet. She would make appearances in three more of his films, her last being 1990's The Rookie.)

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Beat Girl

(1960)

AKA: Wild For Kicks

(A hell-raising teenage girl immerses herself in Soho's beatnik and striptease scenes much to the consternation and frustration of her starchy, uptight architect father and her French stepmother, who, it turns out, is a former stripper.)

(This British teen exploitation flick was directed by Edmond T. Gréville and stars Gillian Hills as the titular renegade. It was released in the US under the title Wild for Kicks.)

"Dynamic drama of youth - mad about 'beat,' living for kicks!"

 (Hills, a starlet who later went on to have  small roles in pivotal films, such as Blowup and A Clockwork Orange, also enjoyed a successful 'ye-ye' singer in France. Ye-ye was a style of pop music that emerged in Western-Southern Europe in the early 1960's, derived from the Beatle's 'yeah, yeah' and featured innocent subject matter with elements of baroque, exotica, pop, jazz and chanson thrown in.)

(Marks the film debuts of British pop idol Adam Faith and actor Peter McEnery, although both would have other films released before this one saw the light of day. Also featured: Christopher Lee and Nigel Green as the owners of a strip joint and Oliver Reed as one of the local youth.)

(Hills was fourteen years-old when making the movie, while Faith was eighteen, and Oliver Reed twenty.  Hills praised Faith's work, deeming it "normal and natural  and under-playing everything", while she chewed the scenery "like a fourteen year-old Shelley Winters.")

(This served as award-winning composer John Barry's first film commission, and was performed by the John Barry Seven and Orchestra, Adam Faith, and Shirley Anne Field. The soundtrack was the first British soundtrack to be released on a vinyl and reached #11 on the UK album chart, paving the way for the release of other film soundtrack albums. In addition the song Made You', composed by Barry with Trevor Peacock and performed in the film by Faith, became a minor hit - that is until it was banned by the BBC for suggestive lyrics.) 

 

(When the British Board of Film Censors first got their hands on a script, then called Striptease Girl, in March of 1959, they labeled it "machine-made dirt," calling it "the worst script... read for some years". The writers reworked and renamed it,  reducing the amount of nudity, but the censors were still not buying it, objecting to the strip tease scenes, the general juvenile delinquency, and a scene where teens were shown playing 'chicken' by lying on railway tracks in front of an oncoming train. It was stamped with an X, which caused its release to be significantly delayed due to the plethora of X-rated films in que before it. When it finally saw the light of day, despite negative reviews, it did quite well at the box office.)

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Georgy Girl

(An inexperienced, somewhat frumpy, but vivacious girl meets her father's employer who wants her as his mistress. She's resistant, wishing rather to live on the fringes of her roommate's lifestyle as part of London's swinging 60's scene.)

(Vanessa Redgrave was originally cast, but backed out of the film a day or two before shooting was to begin, clearing the way for her sister Lynn, who ended up receiving an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her work as the titular Georgy.)

 (Vanessa was also up for an Oscar that same year for the 1966 film,  Morgan, bringing to mind the only other time such a coincidence had occurred before when sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland vied for the Best Actress Oscar in 1942. The Redgrave girls would lose out to Elizabeth Taylor for her searing, uncharacteristic performance in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?.)

(Originally, the studio didn't have much hope for this film, releasing it with very little fanfare. They didn't feel the stars could carry the picture. They changed their tune once Lynne Redgrave got her Oscar nomination and the film went on to bofo box office sales.) 

(Regarding her work on the film, Lynn Redgrave has said: "I couldn't have had a better start than with James. From the very first day on the set, he treated me as an equal, never patronizing, but always ready with advice and encouragement if you seemed to need it. They kept pulling the plug on the film because they said that James and I and Alan Bates didn't add up to much at the box-office, but in the end, we got it made because of James' enthusiasm for the quirkiness of the story, and the chance it gave him to go back to his Yorkshire accent. He took very little money for it, and we all thought it was just going to be a low-budget release, so when it became such a huge success, it was all the more lovely for those of us who'd always had faith in it. James made me feel that if I tried I could do anything, even sing that song, and he told me always to close my eyes just before the camera started to roll. First because it would help to concentrate my mind on the scene, and second it would make my pupils look bigger and better. I've always remembered to do that.")

(While she found the character of Georgy to be "very ruthless. Most people saw her as a sweet softy. I don't think she was a softy at all. She was manipulating and very shrewd. People loved her, I think, because they recognized their own terrible faults, and were glad to see them put up on the screen.")

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next week...

Same time, same channel.

Georgy Girl - The Seekers