1h 26min | Comedy, Romance | 11 July 1952
Director: Edmund Goulding
Stars: Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, Victor Moore, Marilyn Monroe, David Wayne, Eve Arden, Paul Douglas, Eddie Bracken, Mitzi Gaynor, Louis Calhern, Zsa Zsa Gabor, James Gleason, Paul Stewart, Jane Darwell
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045317/
Watched online, ok print for small screen.
Here as part of my Marilyn Monroe progress monitoring. I skipped watching Clash by Night ('52), where she's a worker in the cannery, and she's feistier than her eventual persona, and reasons with standard logic, not man-trap logic.
In this film, she has very little to say/do. She plays a gorgeous woman whose husband enables her to compete in beauty pageants. They have a young child (doesn't talk, but sits in high chair). The Mrs. America pageant is just getting started with little funding, so they're thrilled when they find out they're not married and she can compete in the Miss America circuit (with an illegitimate child?) Because she has little to do beside walk down the runway, it's difficult to declare that her persona is in place. She's certainly focused on making a career of her looks, and walks like the persona. But she doesn't display man-trap logic because she rarely speaks, and she's already got a man. And vulnerability is beyond the scope of the role. A nice twist: hubby DW seems to do all the childcare, and doesn't like it much. He especially doesn't like being left home alone while she makes appearances and travels. But he's terribly proud of her when he's in the audience at her competitions.
I was impressed with MG (paired with EB); her acting was good, and I forgot that she's really a dancer (who doesn't dance at all here.)
Fred Allen must have been incredibly popular on radio, because he certainly doesn't have a face to be seen, yet shows up in movies; I don't understand his appeal. He's paired with GR, and they bicker bitterly.
EA & PD are another pair, who barely speak, apparently out of boredom with each other. After reading the letter, he fantasizes about being single again, but burns the letter. I didn't understand what that meant.
ZG may not have said a word; she giggles through the role. She's paired with LC, and I'm almost as pleased with the letter as he is. I certainly like the way he uses it, and how he plays the scene.
At the end, some of the couples are shown remarrying, but without any explanation of how the alienated ones resolve their differences. Weird.
Fox, dir. Goulding; 6+
