Million Dollar Legs **½ (1939, Betty Grable, John Hartley, Donald O’Connor, Jackie Coogan, Buster Crabbe) – Classic Movie Review 10,499

Directors Nick Grinde and Edward Dmytryk’s 1939 Paramount Pictures black and white campus sports romance comedy Million Dollar Legs is based on a story by Lewis R Foster about students at an ailing college seeking to revive crew rowing racing and gambling their money on the horse with the legs of the title in a horse race to raise some money for the rowing team. Or perhaps it’s a reference to those of Ms Betty Grable, the star of the movie whose legs were to be insured by her studio Twentieth Century-Fox for a million dollars?

Peter Lind Hayes plays Middleton College’s student president Freddie Fry who gets the students to try to get the rowing programme back in the water to win back his girlfriend Susie Quinn (Dorothea Kent). The Dean Gregory Melton Sr (Thurston Hall) won’t help but his son Greg Melton Jr (John Hartley) is a star rower and he will.

The young stars Betty Grable, John Hartley, Donald O’Connor, Jackie Coogan, Peter Lind Hayes and Buster Crabbe (as Coach Jordan) make the best of the thin material in this very light comedy. A filler thing, this, but it was a top 10 grossing hit – Grable’s first – and she was about to become a major star with pictures that were little better.

Keep an eye out for a lightning uncredited appearance by William Holden as a graduate who says ‘Thank you’.

Grinde was fired a week into production and replaced by Dmytryk.

Also in the cast are Thurston Hall, Peter Lind Hayes, Richard Denning, Dorothea Kent, Joyce Matthews, Phil Warren, Edward Arnold Jr, Roy Gordon, Matty Kemp, William Tracy, William Holden, Tom Dugan, Byron Foulger, William H Counselman, Billy Gilbert, John Hart, Bob Ireland, Si Jenks, Pat West and Jim Kelso.

Million Dollar Legs is directed by Nick Grinde and Edward Dmytryk, runs 65 minutes, is made by Paramount Pictures, is released by Paramount, is written by Lewis R Foster (story and screenplay) and Richard English (screenplay), is shot in black and white by Harry Fischbeck is produced by William C Thomas, is scored by Frederick Hollander John Leipold, and is designed by Hans Dreier and William Flannery, with music and lyrics by Stephen Pasternacki and Leo Robin.

It is shot at Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood.

Grable and Coogan were married and had appeared together in supporting roles the previous year in the musical comedy College Swing.

It borrows the title of the W C Fields movie Million Dollar Legs (1932).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,499

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