Fifth Avenue Girl [5th Ave Girl] **** (1939, Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, Verree Teasdale, Tim Holt, James Ellison, Franklin Pangborn) – Classic Movie Review 8660

Producer-director Gregory La Cava’s 1939 screwball romantic comedy Fifth Avenue Girl [5th Ave Girl] is a sweet Hollywood fairy tale starring Ginger Rogers as a penniless, on-the-dole, plain-Jane called Mary Grey, who is taken in and put to work by a moody millionaire playboy, Mr Timothy Borden (Walter Connolly).

Mary is poor but happy, while he and his wife and children are rich but miserable, though that soon changes with Mary on the scene. His selfish family doesn’t like the budding relationship between Mary and Timothy one little bit.

Fifth Avenue Girl is a familiar but consistently amusing romantic comedy confection, with lively performances, especially from Rogers in a movie that showcases her very considerable and delightful comic abilities to the full. Connolly is outstanding too, with jolly support turns in backup from the likes of Verree Teasdale as Martha Borden, Tim Holt as Tim Borden, James Ellison, Franklin Pangborn, Kathryn Adams as Katherine Borden, Louis Calhern, Ferike Boros.

Allan Scott provides a very bright screenplay.

The song Tropicana is written by Aaron González and sung at the Flamingo Club by an unidentified woman.

Also in the cast are Theodore von Eltz, Alexander D’Arcy, Bess Flowers, Jack Carson, Charles Lane, Harlan Briggs, Roy Gordon, Manda Lane, Mildred Coles, Larry McGrath, Robert Emmett Keane, Kerman Cripps, Louis King, Dick Hogan, Earl Richards, Philip Warren, Dell Henderson, Cornelius Keefe, Bob Perry, Dorothy Dilly, Lionel Pape, Max Wagner, Kenny Williams and George Rosener, with Aaron González and His Tango-Rumba Band.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8660

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