COVER GIRL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 282, 17 November 1944, Page 18

COVER GIRL

(Columbia)

HE title of this film refers to those shapely and elegant females who adorn the covers _of American magazines and thus keep up their own circu-

lations by keeping up those of their readers. It is not to be taken in the imperative sense; that is, as an injunction to cover anything up. Quite the reverse in fact: Cover Girl opens with a -sequence which must have made Mr. Hays reach for his spectacles, when eight chorus girls separately and collectively expose more technicoloured flesh than has been seen since the Legion of Decency was founded. Fortunately, perhaps, Cover Girl turns out to be something a good deal more than just an orgy of flesh-tints. Many of its song-and-dance routines have a zest and a zipp and an imaginative spaciousness equalled only in some of the early Astaire-Rogers films and not seen on the screen since. The dialogue moves almost as fast and twinkles as brightly as the feet of Rusty Parker, "the girl with (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) diamonds in her shoes" (Rita Hayworth), and her dancing partner Danny Maguire (Gene Kelly). And scintillating is the only word for many of the settings. There were, indeed, several occasions during the 97 minutes of Cover Girl when our little man was just about out of his seat with enthusiasm. What induced a mood of more restrained optimism (as Mr. Churchill calls it) was the story. Now I know it is customary to accept the story of musical films as a mere formula; as something to fill in the gaps between the songs and dances, And although this may not be a@ good custom, you are prepared to put up with. it, provided the producer does not try to make the story out to be something it isn’t, But when he takes the same old weather-worn backstage theme and attempts to turn it into a vehicle for serious characterisation and emotional subtleties, the going is likely to be so uneven that you may begin to lose interest in the scenery. That is rather what happens here. "For heaven’s sake," remarks one of the characters, "what do you think this isa vicious circle?" While not so intended, that is an apt comment on this tale of a dancer who graduates from a Brooklyn night-club to the cover of Vanity magazine, Though she remains faithful to her one true love, the night-club proprietor, he fears that she is rising beyond his humble grasp when she starts consorting with High Society: so in order to prove that his fears were well founded and give him the chance to suffer soulfully, the film goes to great lengths to produce the inevitable lovers’ quarrel which will put the heroine on Broadway and into the clutches of another man (Lee Bowman). It then completes the vicious circle by pulling her out again and restoring her to her soul-mate. That story is pure pigeon-hole stuff; no amount of dressing up and undressing, no displays of dramatic and emotional fireworks, however capable. (and Rita Hayworth is a good actress as well as a good dancer) can hope to disguise the fact, And I think it would have been better not to try, But all this is only to explain why Cover Girl gets a sit-down instead of a stand-up clap, It still remains a very bright and very amusing entertainment.