BEFORE: Rita Hayworth carries over from "Gilda". The IMDB notes for "Gilda" suggested that she did not perform her own songs in "Gilda", that she lip-synched them, but she was so good at doing that, no one could tell. I'm not sure if that's possible, so I'll be keeping a close eye on that tonight.
THE PLOT: Rusty Parker wins a contest and becomes a celebrated cover girl; this endangers her romance with dancing mentor Danny.
AFTER: The notes for this film confirm that Ms. Hayworth's singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. I'm guessing that they shot the footage first and then overdubbed the singing later, because no one could possibly be THIS perfect at lip-synching. Someone always makes a mistake, especially if they're dancing while singing. But in a studio, they can do take after take, or have the sound engineer nudge the lines into perfect synch - that makes much more sense to me.
The notes for this film also state that Ms. Hayworth married Orson Welles while in production on this film - I'll get to him, at least as subject matter, later this week.
Rita's got a double role here, she also plays her character's grandmother, who was also a singer + dancer, and is seen in flashbacks. An older magazine editor who is running a search for a new cover girl came close to marrying her grandmother, and is reminded fondly of his youth, and the girl that got away.
So, after winning the contest, Hayworth's character is lured away from the small Brooklyn dance troupe that she performs in, to the glitz of Broadway and the promise of a larger theater, a larger show and larger audiences.
At least tonight I don't have to deal with complicated sexual politics, just the normal man/woman dynamic, when one becomes more successful than the other, and the relationship suffers. It's similar in that respect to "A Star Is Born", or anything along those lines. Eventually Rusty has to make a choice, to either stay in the new larger world of fame, or try and go back to her relationship with her less-successful but more earnest boyfriend/choreographer. Unless the film is suggesting that women shouldn't be more successful than their men, which means I'm right back in the Stone Age again.
I wasn't sold on all of the songs, some of them just seemed a little wordy, a little too eager to impress with clever rhymes. That's the only thing that kept this from being on the same level as, say, "Singin' in the Rain" or "On the Town". Most of these songs were written by Ira Gershwin, I guess I didn't know he was so into obfuscation.
NITPICK POINT: The characters have a weekly ritual where they order oysters from a restaurant, even though none of them like to eat oysters, because they're merely searching for pearls (or "poils", as the Brooklyn-accented barman says...). There are a few problems with this, namely that the type of oysters we eat are generally not the kind that produce pearls. Also, this film is set in 1944, with food rationing taking place, so I'm not sure that people would look kindly on people who order food and don't eat it. And I don't know how they did things back in the 40's, but you wouldn't see any restaurant today allow customers to shuck their own oysters - there's too great a chance of injury, and the restaurant could be held liable.
Also starring Gene Kelly (last seen in "What a Way to Go!"), Phil Silvers, Eve Arden (last seen in "Anatomy of a Murder"), Otto Kruger (last seen in "Saboteur"), Lee Bowman.
RATING: 5 out of 10 tap shoes
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