'Cover Girl' and Rita Hayworth

[litlover12]

This post is for the "getTV Rita Hayworth Blogathon" at Classic Movie Hub.

Cover Girl (1944) is my favorite Rita Hayworth film. And one of my favorite Gene Kelly films, to boot. In it, Hayworth plays two roles: Rusty Parker, a dancer at a Brooklyn nightclub, and (in flashbacks) Maribelle Hicks, Rusty's grandmother who worked in vaudeville.

Rusty is engaged to her boss, Danny (Kelly), but when she wins a chance to be on the cover of a major magazine, she's suddenly torn between staying with him and working their way up together, and instantly becoming a big-time celebrity and Broadway star on her own. Of course it's clear what she should do. Number one, it's an old movie; in old movies, it's always clear that you're supposed to choose relationships over career. Number two, Danny has always warned her that if stardom comes too quickly, it can vanish equally quickly. Number three, HELLO, this is GENE KELLY we're talking about.



You'd have to be out of your mind to leave him!

And number four, the magazine editor who chooses Rusty for the cover, and who wants to manage her career and get her on Broadway, is a controlling old creepazoid named John Coudair (Otto Kruger) who also tried to control and manage her grandmother, Maribelle, back in the day, and who almost controlled and managed her (the grandmother) into marrying him. He's mesmerized by the fact that Rusty looks just like said grandmother.

See?

But no worries, Coudair doesn't want to marry Rusty, he just wants to manipulate her into marrying a Broadway producer (Lee Bowman) she doesn't love! Truly, truly creepy. The only good thing about this guy -- literally the ONLY good thing -- is that he has Eve Arden for a secretary.

Anyway, we all know what Rusty should do. What I find interesting is how the movie makes it clear what she should do. One has only to compare the way she gets to dance at the Brooklyn nightclub, with the way she dances once she gets to Broadway.

For background, the movie musical at this point was in transition, from the formal elegance of Astaire and Rogers and the elaborate showcases of Busby Berkeley, to the lively, energetic, impromptu-feeling style that Kelly brought to the screen. So when Rusty's dancing at the nightclub or elsewhere with Danny, we get fun, fast, expressive routines like this:

Not to mention gorgeously romantic routines like this. (Sorry, can't embed, but do follow the link. I promise, it's worth it.)

Whereas, when she dances on Broadway  -- for of course she initially makes the wrong choice; where would all the conflict and drama be if she didn't? -- it's one of those big, fancy, yawnworthy numbers full of soaring choruses that the movie musical was in the process of ditching.

Even leaving out the exhaustion of having to run up and down that humongous ramp, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to do this kind of a number. There's hardly any fun in it, even though Rusty claims there is. There's that one little bit where she gets to, you know, actually DANCE, but most of it is stilted and stuffy. And there's a bunch of generic-looking chorus guys in suits instead of just one handsome guy who can really dance. Case closed. Girls, always stay away from creepazoids who want to put you in stitled dance numbers and marry you off to their Broadway producer buddies, and always stay with Gene Kelly.

It goes without saying, of course, that in whichever milieu she appears -- the Brooklyn nightclub or the Broadway stage as Rusty, or the vaudeville stage as Maribelle -- Hayworth looks beautiful and dances like a dream. Though she'd been making movies for years, this was only her fourth musical, and it's the kind of role (or rather, roles) that many female stars would have given anything for, a good juicy role with eight song-and-dance numbers, gorgeous costumes, and opportunities to do both comedy and drama, including a quasi-breakdown at one point. (Her singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears.) With vibrant beauty, an appealing girl-next-door quality, and fantastic dancing, Hayworth makes the most of every opportunity that Cover Girl affords, meaning that this a film her fans will want to watch again and again.

This post is part of the “getTV Rita Hayworth Blogathon” hosted by Classic Movie Hub and running during the entire month of October. Please visit getTVschedule to see a full list of Rita Hayworth films airing on the channel this month, and please be sure to visit Classic Movie Hub for a full list of other Blogathon entries.

(That banner is supposed to link to Classic Movie Hub, but I always forget how to do that, so here's their link!)

Comments

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

Do they just not make people this beautiful and talented anymore? Why are we stuck with creatures like Nicki Minaj and others of their ilk?

[ever-maedhros.livejournal.com]

Wow. That routine in Put Me to the Test is just lovely (though, man, it looks demanding). Haven't seen this movie yet, but it looks like I shall have to, sometime soon!

[modmerseygirl.livejournal.com]

Lovely! That's one of my favourite films, as well. :) It's so fun and charming!