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Cover Girl
A nightclub dancer makes it big in modeling, leaving her dancer boyfriend behind.
Release : | 1944 |
Rating : | 6.7 |
Studio : | Columbia Pictures, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Art Direction, |
Cast : | Rita Hayworth Gene Kelly Lee Bowman Phil Silvers Jinx Falkenburg |
Genre : | Comedy Music Romance |
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Such a frustrating disappointment
Expected more
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Its sentimental and maudlin, which I suppose is par for the course for a wartime Hollywood musical but it is also lacking decent songs. Whilst the dancing is okay it is such a shame that Rita Hayworth has so much make-up applied that she looks well beyond her 26 years. Maybe its something of the times though because Gene Kelly look way beyond his 32 years as well. In fact he looks positively unwell and although he is supposed to be sad and unhappy that things are not going his way, he really does look shattered and prompted to overact. Phil Silvers, who i thought would be embarrassing is really good, bit over the top but he convinces and Hayworth too, even in her 'cockney' song does pretty well. The costumes and the technicolor are wonderful and the 'cover girl' sequence towards the end featuring actual cover girls of the day is great. There is also an impressive routine where Hayworth comes down a big blue spiral structure in a gold dress and is caught by a group of guys. Its just that so much of this is really not very good and with a seeming out of sorts Kelly at the centre, the film has to suffer.
Rita Hayworth plays two characters and the title role in this musical comedy which won an Academy Award for Best Musical Score; the film also received Oscar nominations for its Color Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Cinematography and Sound; its Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin original song "Long Ago and Far Away" was also nominated. It was directed by Charles Vidor, with a story by Erwin Gelsey and a screenplay by Virginia Van Upp; Marion Parsonnet and Paul Gangelin wrote the adaptation.Hayworth plays chorus girl singer-dancer Rusty Parker (and her grandmother Maribelle Hicks in flashback) opposite Brooklyn club owner and fellow performer Danny McGuire, played by Gene Kelly. Phil Silvers plays Genius, the third wheel and comedian in the trio that's struggling to make it big; they spend every Friday night at Joe's (Edward Brophy, uncredited) bar hoping to find a pearl in an oyster. When Rusty hears fellow chorus girl Maurine Martin (Leslie Brooks) discussing her dream to "get out of this dump and become famous" by auditioning for Vanity magazine's cover, she too decides to give it a try. But Maurine intentionally gives her some bad advice such that Rusty blows her chance with the fashion magazine's Cornelia 'Stonewall' Jackson (Eve Arden). Model Jinx Falkenburg appears briefly, as herself. Otto Kruger plays Vanity's owner, John Coudair; Jess Barker plays Coudair opposite Hayworth's character in the flashback sequences.Cornelia and Coudair go to McGuire's club one night to take another look at Maurine and he "discovers" Rusty, who bears a remarkable resemblance to his first love, singer-dancer Maribelle Hicks (Hayworth again), who'd left him at the altar for a piano player. Coudair puts Rusty on the next cover of his magazine and suddenly McGuire's Brooklyn club is all the rage. When Cornelia and Coudair take Broadway producer Noel Wheaton (Lee Bowman) to the club, he falls head over heals for Rusty and Coudair is only too happy to facilitate their introductions. Wheaton sends her flowers every day (via Billy Benedict's uncredited delivery boy) and, with Coudair's help, manages to sign her for his Broadway show. Naturally, this jeopardizes Rusty's relationship with Danny, whose jealously causes him to exacerbate the situation. Kelly performs a remarkable Stanley Donen-choreographed dance routine with (a ghost-like double exposure version of) himself. Danny and Genius enter military service - there's a war going on - while Rusty stars in Wheaton's show and drinks to salve her lost love. She walks down the aisle with Wheaton just like her grandmother had with Coudair, jilts him just the same, and returns to Danny at Joe's, where Genius joins and the three of them happily dance to the end, together again.
Rusty's a popular singer-dancer for small-timer Mcguire's club, but gets her head turned by fancy impresario Wheaton who wants her to leave her friends and take her talents to his swanky uptown stage show.Talk about eye candy. There's enough glamour here to send guys into a sugar overload. I hope they didn't show this WWII production overseas, otherwise a million GI's would be swimming home. I've seen a sexier Hayworth, but never a more sparkling one. She's obviously enjoying herself, and why not, she's got Kelly as a partner and a goofy Silvers to keep her in stitches. And get a load of the hats the gals wear. Some look like they're getting messages from Mars.Okay, except for "Long Ago and Far Away", the tunes are pretty forgettable, while that set-up in the trooper cattle car should have been seriously re-thought. Still, I thought that dancing threesome down the city street was utterly charming, and reminded me of Kelly's signature number in Singin' in the Rain (1952). Then too, actor Bowman (Wheaton) makes a perfect Manhattan lounge lizard. For younger folks, there were a lot of references to Brooklyn during the war. That's because the New York borough came to symbolize the common man and the American melting pot-- in short, the kind of national unity that winning the war would need. So, naturally, good guy McGuire (Kelly) has his stage show there, while slickster Wheaton has his in more snobbish uptown Manhattan. So Rusty (Hayworth) has to learn it's more fun to crack oysters in a Brooklyn bar than sip martinis in an swanky lounge.Anyhow, it's hard to think of a brighter, more colorful production than this line-up of Hollywood glamour that keeps "comin' at yuh", one pretty face after another.
I wanted to like this film...I really did. However, the plot was quite simple (and easily resolved) and the songs were an amazingly flat and uninteresting lot. I think all this is very apparent to me because I have recently spent a lot of time watching MGM musicals as well as films about classic Hollywood song and dance films--and "Cover Girl" just doesn't stack up all that well. Perhaps this is because the film is made by Columbia--a studio not known for its musicals.The film begins with a bunch of dancing girls all talking about some contest--where the winner is chosen as a cover girl for some magazine. Surprise....Rita Hayworth is the one picked. And, soon after this, her life changes--with great job offers and the wolfish Lee Bowman chasing after her. But what about her partner (Gene Kelly)? What about their act? What about the fact that the songs are so dull?So what does the film have going for it? Well, the color film is nice and Rita looks swell. And, at least one song and dance number is a standout--the one where Gene dances with himself. You have to see it to know what I mean--it must have been very difficult to choreograph and execute. But this alone is not enough to make up for the film's deficiencies--such as the notion of a granddaughter looking EXACTLY like her grandmother, the badly synchronized singing in many places and the rest. In addition, there is a romantic tension between Rita and Gene--when it all very EASILY could have been solved with her going on to a better job and Kelly keeping his old one AND they could have STILL kept dating. Overall, a time-passer and nothing more--even though it looks great.