Cover Girl **** (1944, Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman, Phil Silvers, Eve Arden, Otto Kruger, Jinx Falkenburg, Leslie Brooks) – Classic Movie Review 3616

Director Charles Vidor’s delicious and delightful 1944 musical showcases Rita Hayworth, who begins her reign as Columbia Pictures’ biggest star, top billed in every film from Cover Girl till Pal Joey in 1957. It was one of the most popular musicals during the Second World War and turned both Hayworth and Kelly into stars.

Columbia borrow Gene Kelly from MGM for their big, stylish, stupendous backstage musical for Hayworth, who plays Rusty Parker, a Brooklyn chorus girl dancer at her boyfriend Danny McGuire (Kelly)’s nightclub, who wants to be a Vanity magazine cover girl. In this, she is helped by the magazine’s wealthy besotted editor John Coudair (Otto Kruger), leading to the chance for stardom and the offer of a Broadway musical.

There are eight enchanting dance routines for Hayworth. Kelly stages the choreography (with Stanley Donen) and his dancing with Hayworth (in their only movie pairing) has a superb spontaneity and vivacity recalling the heights of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The songs from Jerome Kern (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) – the Oscar-nominated ‘Long Ago and Far Away’, ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’, ‘Sure Thing’, ‘That’s the Best of All’, ‘Put Me to the Test’ and ‘The Show Must Go On’ – are gorgeous, while comedienne Eve Arden does her witty wisecracking as Cornelia Jackson and comic Phil Silvers his daffy mugging as Genius when the plot gets bogged down.

Musical directors Carmen Dragon and Morris W Stoloff won an Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical. It is Columbia’s first Technicolor musical. And it looks lovely, too, in Technicolor – Rudolph Maté and Allen M Davey were Oscar nominated for Best Cinematography, Color. The film also boasts Oscar nominated Art Direction and Interior Decoration, as well as the most lavish modern and 1890s costumes.

Also in the cast are Lee Bowman, Otto Kruger, Jinx Falkenburg (as herself), Leslie Brooks, Jess Barker, Anita Colby, Curt Bois, Ed Brophy, Thurston Hall, Jack Norton, Eddie Dunn, Sam Flint, Shelley Winters, Kathleen O’Malley, Ralph Sanford and Barbara Pepper.

Hayworth’s singing voice is dubbed by Martha Mears. It is songwriter Arthur Schwartz’s first venture as producer.

Vidor re-united with Hayworth for Gilda (1946). MGM now promoted Kelly’s career at its studio and refused to loan him to Columbia to star again with Hayworth in the movie of his Broadway show Pal Joey.

The screenplay is by Virginia Van Upp, with the adaptation by Marion Parsonnet and Paul Gangelin, from a story by Erwin Gelsey.

http://derekwinnert.com/pal-joey-frank-sinatra-kim-novak-rita-hayworth-classic-film-review-1168/

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3616
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