Wonderland Burlesque's Let's Go To The Movies: That Girl! Edition Part VI

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's Go To The Movies

That Girl! Edition Part VI

Who's that girl? Well, I'll tell you who...

This week we have a couple of 'career' girls, a couple of old-fashioned girls  a bunch of goody-two shoes. Plus - a blast from the past featuring Davy Jones.

More adventures featuring '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?

Well, let's not keep the little ladies waiting...

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

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My Best Girl

(1927)

(A girl who works at a department store finds herself smitten with a co-worker who turns out to be the son of the chain store's owner. It seems he took a job in the stockroom in order to prove to his father that he is his own man. He returns her feelings and love is in the air - until he reveals that he's engaged to a debutante, handpicked by his upper crust mother. Will true love win out?)

(This silent romantic comedy was directed by Sam Taylor and stars Mary Pickford and Charles "Buddy" Rogers and was produced by Pickford.

 (In 1928, cinematographer Charles Rosher received an Academy Award nomination for his work on this film.) 

(This was Pickford's final silent film, released immediately after Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, which, of course, changed the industry forever.)

(It should be noted that, upon completion of the film, Pickford's co-star, Rogers, would become her future husband. Pickford biographer Jeffrey Vance said of the film: "What makes My Best Girl special is that it captures the miracle of two people falling in love with each other as their characters do. It is challenging to capture genuine emotion on a cold piece of celluloid, but falling in love is beautifully immortalized in My Best Girl.")

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Our Little Girl

(1935)

"Darling of the world."

(A troubled child tries to patch up her parents' broken marriage by running away. Her father is so caught up in his work he neglects his wife who has been spending more and more time with her husband's best friend! The two decide to get a divorce, unaware of the impact their actions are having on their daughter. Once her mother announces she will remarry, the little girl runs away from home.) 

(This little drama, the directing swansong of John S. Robertson, stars Shirley Temple, Rosemary Ames and Joel McCrea.)

(Originally titled Heaven's Gate,  the studio changed it because they feared it sounded too much like a cemetery.)

(Joel McCrea gave Shirley Temple the nickname 'Butch' while they were filming this movie. Temple later admitted that during filming she developed a "big crush" on McCrea.) 

(Unlike her other films during this period, this one didn't feature a single dance number and contained only a single song. Also, for a change of pace, Temple played someone who wasn't partially or completely orphaned, as was true of nearly all of her other films. But this was hardly the start of a new trend. In her next 13 films? Yep, she was an orphan.)

(In her memoirs, Temple wrote that about her huge crush on McCrea, however, in order to avoid notable delays during filming, she refrained from flirting - and there were delays. While playing in a field with tall grass, two of her false teeth fell out and couldn't be found. This resulted in the production shutting down for an entire day. Then, during a long drawn-out camera setup, Temple found she had to go to the bathroom, but was not allowed to leave the set. Unable to hold it, she wet herself and fled to her dressing room. It took a lot of coaxing on the part of her mother to get her to return to the set, but she did so in order to avoid further delays. What a little trouper!)

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Fifth Avenue Girl

(1939)

(A lonely wealthy industrialist, whose wife has been cavorting about town on the arm of a millionaire playboy, meets a homeless woman in a park on the eve of his birthday. He convinces her to accompany him to a nightclub, where the two have a grand old time. The homeless woman sleeps over in the guest bedroom, something which the wife discovers upon coming home the next morning. Suddenly, the wife begins to show renewed interest in the husband. Realizing that it is because his wife believes the homeless woman to be his mistress, he hires her to play that role. Now a part of the household, the homeless woman proceeds to have a positive, common sense effect on the lives of the other members of the household. Numerous romantic complications arise due to her advice, putting her in the middle of a tempest of emotions.)

(This RKO Radio Pictures comedy was directed by Gregory La Cava and stars Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, Verree Teasdale, and James Ellison.)

(A new ending was shot for the film after preview audiences were distressed by the original which had the homeless woman leaving the wealthy household and walking down Fifth Avenue - homeless once more. According to Rogers' autobiography, upon finishing the film with the original ending, she went on vacation to Honolulu. When she returned, she learned of plans to alter the ending and filmed it at that time.)

(During production the film was alternately known as My Fifth Avenue Girl and The Other Half.)

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Escort Girl

(1941)

"Meet the girls... from the Bureau."

"Beware! The cost of a little fun?"

(A former escort girl has worked her way up the organization and is now co-owner of one of the most successful escort services in the city. She keeps the source of her income from her daughter, whom she has sent to the finest private schools. Unaware that the DA is in the process of conducting an undercover sting operation, the daughter brings home her beau, now fiancé - an assistant to the DA - to meet her mother. It doesn't take long for the daughter's future husband to figure out that the mother is involved in the very escort service the DA is investigating. He pulls aside the mother and, with the promise that he will say nothing of the mother's past to her daughter, he gets the mother to promise to give up the business altogether, which she agrees to do. Sharing the news with her business partner, he's understandably upset. When the DA  has the fiancé call the service to have a girl sent over for a date, the mother's business partner makes up an excuse and sends June, unbeknownst to her mother, to the assistant's room. When June arrives, her fiancé, believing her to be an escort girl, is understandably upset. The mother, upon learning what her business partner has done then arrives at the hotel room to clear things up. This prompts the business partner, fearing that the mother is about to ruin his lucrative business, to follow the mother to the hotel room. There are now four people in the hotel room - but only two walk out alive!)  

"Want a date! Meet the girls from the Bureau."

"See why men who play must pay!"

"Secrets sensationally exposed."

(This morality drama was directed by Edward E. Kaye and stars Betty Compson, Wheeler Oakman, Robert Kellard with an uncredited Cyd Charisse as one of the flamenco dancers.)

(Betty Compson, actress/film producer - got her start in vaudeville and  began her movie career during the silent era. She is best known for her performances in 1928's The Docks of New York and 1928's The Barker, the latter of which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.)

Betty Compson

(Signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures, Compson worked with the likes of Joseph von Sternberg and Eric von Stroheim. When her contract was not renewed, she began doing independent, low budget films. At one point, she was under consideration to replace Garbo, with whom MGM had grown weary of dealing with, in 1927's Flesh And The Devil, opposite John Gilbert. Instead, the studio cast her opposite Lon Chaney in 1928's The Big City. At her peak, in 1930, she appeared in nine films in a single year. She continued acting until 1948, when she retired to create a cosmetics line.)

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An Old-Fashioned Girl

(1949)

"The joyous successor to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women."

(Acting against society norms for young women of her social standing, our heroine leaves home in order to earn money for her family.)

(This musical comedy, based on the beloved Louisa May Alcott novel, was directed by Arthur Dreifuss and stars Gloria Jean, John Hubbard, Jimmy Lydon and Frances Hafferty.)

(One of the black dresses Gloria Jean wears in this film was worn by Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind a decade earlier.)

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Career Girl

(1960)

"She was a starlet... out to make the big time... the men, the passions, the lonely nights... until she found fulfillment in a sunlit paradise."

"You've got to see it to believe it!"

(A young, ambitious, attractive blonde arrives in Tinseltown with plans to become a movie star.)

"The adventures of June Wilkinson that play-girl in the exclusive behind-the-scenes story of the fetching figure. She reached stardom by using all her nature-gifted charms."

"A frank and revealing look into a sun-lover's paradise... where the starlets retreat!"

(This low-budget independent exploitation drama was directed by Harold David and stars June Wilinson, Charles Robert Keane, Lisa Barrie, and Cindy Amis.)

(June Wilkinson was in Brazil filming a different movie when producer Albert Zugsmith heard about her doing a topless beach scene. With that in mind, he convinced her to do this movie. Wilkinson holds no delusions about the type of material she doing, admitting in an interview that this film was pretty bad, though she thought it did hold one redeeming moment, at the very end when she takes a dive off a diving board naked at a nudist camp. She felt that shot alone was well worth the price of a ticket.)

(Career Girl broke records in NYC in a theater on 42nd Street where it ran for years. At the time of release, there wasn't much nudity in films so the inserted nude scenes were considered a must-see. Men kept coming back over and over to see Wilkinson dive of that diving board into the pool, going so far as to arrive after the picture had started,  buying  a ticket and then going into the theatre just in time to see that one scene.)

 (Wilkinson, an English model/actress, was chiefly known for her numerous appearances in Playboy magazine and her exploitation films during the 1960's. At the height of her career she was dubbed "the most photographed nude in America." She began her career on the stage, performing at the age of twelve. Turning heads and selling tickets, at the age of 15, she became the youngest topless dancer at the Windmill Theatre in London from 1957 to 1958. While doing a promotional tour in the United States, she was discovered by Hugh Hefner who immediately put her in her magazine.)

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Star Spangled Girl

(1976)

"I may be provincial and old-fashioned. I may believe in a lot of dead things like patriotism and the Constitution., and I like apple pie because that the dumb way I was brought up, and that the dumb way I feel!"

(The girl next door is a bit of a square - the kind that normally would be a total turn-off for a pair of seasoned, idealistic, 1960's-style hippies. However, the pair find themselves charmed by the girl's winning ways and then falling head over heels for her irresistible energy and verve.) 

(Based on Neil Simon's 1966 play of the same name, his romantic comedy was directed by Jerry Paris and stars Sandy Duncan, Tony Roberts, Todd Susman, and Elizabeth Allen.)

(The original Broadway production, starring Connie Stevens, Anthony Perkins and Richard Benjamin, opened in December of 1966 and ran for 261 performances. The theater marquee for the production can be seen during the opening titles of TV series That Girl. The play's was inspired by a lively political argument/discussion Simon witnessed  at a party between an astronaut's conservative wife and liberal-minded Paddy Chayefsky.)

(Paramount Pictures offered the lead role  to Ali MacGraw, Britt Ekland, Goldie Hawn, Joey Heatherton and Cybill Shepherd, but all declined. Ironically, it was also reported in the April 1967 edition of the Hollywood Reporter that Marlo Thomas was under consideration for the role.)

   

(The movie's theme song, Girl, was sung by Davy Jones, a member of pop phenom The Monkees. An abridged version of the single was heard during an episode of the TV series The Brady Bunch. Jones reprised the song for 1995's campy The Brady Bunch Movie, singing it as an overwrought, grunge-style ballad.)

(Simon was never happy with Star Spangled Girl. He disliked both the play and the movie, blaming the writing, premise and direction. The play proved to be his first major critical and commercial failure on Broadway, while the film met a similar fate, long considered a critical and commercial failure.)

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Call Girl

(1974)

"At your service... for a price!"

(A young man returns home after spending time abroad and is asked by his multi-millionaire father to assist with the family business, The son agrees to do so, only if he can spend the rest of the evening and night pursuing his true passion, painting. He meets a beautiful young woman and falls madly in love with her. However, when he attempts to introduce her to his parents, while his mother immediately accepts her, his father recognizes her as a high-priced prostitute with whom he had an intimate relationship with years earlier.)

(This Bollywood romantic-drama was directed by Vijay Kapoor and stars Vikram and Zaheera.)

(Hailing from India, Zaheera made her film debut in the 1969 James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, credited as Zara. Over the next decade she appeared in numerous Bollywood movies. Call Girl, considered quite controversial at the time, served as her first lead role.)

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Rodeo Girl

(1980)

"Inspired by real-life Rodeo World Champion Sue Pirite"

(The wife of a champion rodeo performer has grown tired of her supportive role as a stay at home housewife. Much to her husband's disapproval, to shake things up, the woman becomes an aspiring rodeo rider herself, under the guidance and encouragement of her mother, a former rodeo performer.)

 

(Based on the true story of rodeo champion Sue Pirtle, this CBS television drama was directed by Jackie Cooper and stars Katherine Ross, Bo Hopkins, Candy Clark and Wilford Brimley.)

(Katharine Ross is only ten years younger than Jacqueline Brookes, who played her mother in the film.)

New Girl

(1985)

 (A missing mascot dog named Bummer lands a young college sportswriter in trouble. Blackmailed, he accepts a position on the women's basketball team - where he must play disguised as a girl. Everyone may have their suspicions, but they keep it to themselves as he takes the team all the way to championship game.) 

"This guy's in trouble because he's the..."

(This college comedy was directed by Charles Ison and stars David Andrews, Beth Abernathy, Willie Stratford and Tracee Johnson.)

(David Andrews began his acting career by appearing in 1984's A Nightmare On Elm Street. Other notable films include: Graveyard Shift, Fight Club, Apollo 13, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.)

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And that's all for today.

Tune in next week.

Same time... same channel. 

Girl - Davy Jones