Review of Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) by Bernard A — 01 Apr 2010

Charming but Convoluted.

Lucille Ball wanted to play Scarlett O'Hara. It is a very good thing that she didn't; she wouldn't have handled the role at all well. What's interesting, though, is that they suggested to her that she play Belle Watling instead. Lucy didn't go for it, and I'm glad about that, too, but the character here is not without parallels. We only think of her from her TV days, where she played wacky, but she played a very different character in her movie days. I admit I haven't seen a lot of her old movies, but she did play an actress in more than a few of them. I can't speak to how similar they were to Bubbles/Tiger Lily here, but she certainly wasn't playing the dizzy young housewife. Bubbles would never settle for living in a small apartment with a two-bit nightclub owner.

Judy O'Brien (Maureen O'Hara) is a lovely young dancer in a time where there are more dancers than jobs--which is pretty much any time there have been dancers. However, she has too much class for the jobs available, and instead Bubbles gets hired for the burlesque job available. Judy tries to get a job with actually classy choreographer (or something) Steve Adams (Ralph Bellamy), but somehow, it doesn't work. I missed how--the movie doesn't necessarily make sense. Least of all when Bubbles, now billing herself as Tiger Lily, hires Judy to dance between two of Bubbles's numbers. Apparently, it is somehow funny to put a serious dance number in there so the audience can make merciless fun of it. And there's playboy Jimmy Harris, Jr. (Louis Hayward), who is flirting with Judy and whom Bubbles is after.

I honestly do not get the plot of this. I was mostly able to follow what was happening. The problem was that I didn't know why. I'll admit to not being a tremendous devotee of burlesque, and that may be why I can't understand how Bubbles ended up on Broadway. I also don't understand how she seemed able to fill a bill entirely by herself. It is also my understanding of burlesque that there should be more skin shown than actually is. Of course, that's the Code talking--but then why burlesque? Surely there was another popular way for Bubbles to perform which would draw a big crowd. After all, it seems as though even just being popular dancing would draw a bigger crowd than Judy's ballet. Having the ballet there just seemed like wanton cruelty on the part of Bubbles--and all things considered, it may well have been.

One of the provisos of the Code was pretty much that all films should be watchable by all members of the family, which is really bizarre. However, the attitude pervades. NC-17 films don't get play because video stores and theatres and newspapers (oh my) won't in general make them available or advertise them. Certainly I'm not saying that this movie should have been NC-17, but there was no reason to make it wholesome. The enforced tameness of the relationships made the plot harder to piece together than it needed to be. Ten years earlier--or twenty later--Bubbles could have been revealed in her full gold-digging glory. Which should not be seen as my crying for a remake; it was only barely worth making the once. However, kids don't need to see a movie of this sort no matter how tame it's made.

I've never been much of a devotee of Lucille Ball's, and it makes me kind of sad that so many more people focus on her than on the lovely and talented Maureen O'Hara. Bubbles had to be developed enough here to make the rivalry make sense, so I don't mind a focus on Lucy here. It is also vaguely interesting that she would end up owning RKO, the studio which produced this movie. (As part of the studio's perpetual upheaval, Desilu, Lucy and Desi's production company, ended up owning at least bits of it.) However, everyone knows Lucy. Probably even kids growing up today, when the syndicated sitcoms of my youth are replaced by hours and hours of infomercials, know who Lucille Ball was. But you can't even identify Maureen O'Hara as the mom from [i]The Parent Trap[/i], because they've only ever seen the remake anyway.