Cover Girl (1944)

the audience applauded

Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I have seen this movie a few times always with pleasure.Rita Haworth & Gene Kelly were always entertaining. Also talking about gorgeous Rita has kindled a memory about my 3rd cousin Constance Worth (not her real name)who also appeared with Rita Haworth in the movie Angels Over Broadway. She was born in Sydney Enid Joyce Howarth known in Australia as Joycelyn Howarth the youngest of 3 daughters & her mother Mary Ellen Dumbrell married a Banker named Moffatt Howarth. This girl was the first Australian actress to find stardom in Hollywood.Our family is proud to be related.

Columbia pictures tried for the first time in COVER GIRL to make a high budget film. Many inventions pave the way for future movies. One is the flashback as several scenes set forty years before the action. One is an out of character choreographed sequence when Gene Kelly dances with his alter ego his own choreography. One is a hodge podge of themes as the comedy routines of Stanley Donen, Phil Silvers and Gene Kelly alternating with Rita Hayworth's brilliant portrayal of a poor girl reaching for her dreams at the expenses of giving up her happiness. The harsh color pallet of the forties and the less brilliant panning shots of the choreographed sequences are the reasons I do not rank this academy award winning box office smash higher.

Date: 11 October, 2012 -First Time Watch- Rusty (Rita Hayworth) is a showgirl at a small nightclub that is owned by her boyfriend Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). She has an average life, spending her nights looking for pearls in oysters with Danny and mutual friend Genius (Phil Silvers) until another showgirl shows her a job position at a local magazine looking for their next cover girl. Naturally she applies and gets the position, which leads to fame but tearing her away from Danny and Genius. Rita Hayworth was just beginning her climb to ultimate super stardom when the movie was released and was basically centered around her. Yet, I found her performance average and unmoving. She basically acted like a woman with a lot of drama in her life. Phil Silvers' performance was also average. It was really Gene Kelly who gets the praise. He had only done a few movies before 'Cover Girl' and this movie ultimate shot him into fame. I see why and his performance is really the greatest thing about the movie, especially when he dances with his conscience, that's really neat to see. It's overall a good movie with a predictable ending however I still enjoyed it, but it's not a favorite.8/10

This is really worth it for Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, and different reasons for each. I enjoy these splashy films from old Hollywood in part because by now we can glean enough about the various circumstances surrounding that stage where everything was shown to be dreamy, enough to recognize tatters of private darkness planted or inadvertently mirrored in the actual films that challenge the polished image. We can supply extra depth that was kept from the public at the time. Extra beauty mixed with pain that is about the effort to stage beauty.So Rita is the radiant face center stage, performing for the dreams of two men, now and once in the past. Her story is another in a long line of Hollywood intrigue and covert allure with dark spots and well kept secrets. We know how she was groomed by the studio into the image that we came to know and love, how she was deeply troubled in a number of ways, most notably alcohol and men, how she was never allowed to sing and which embarrassed her in public. There is all of that funneled in this one here from a tumultuous life in the big stage of movies. She sparkles, but with a hint of precious fragility.The day the wedding scene for the film was shot, she eloped with Orson Welles. And she was the first female lead to dance with both Astaire and Kelly, accomplished here.And there is Gene, on and off that stage, fighting to stage a show around her that is about the feet and not just the beautiful face. He was on loan from MGM to Columbia for this and granted full creative control to stage the show that we see, the experience from this would go on to pay dividends for MGM at the time of Singin' in the Rain.His character's show inside the film is barely okay, a lot of tap crowded in a small venue. But it's what he choreographs outside that has magic; the cover-girl show where the giant lens of a camera descends on stage and colorful dreams of women unfold inside the eye, our eye, framed as magazine covers; the number with the three of them out on the street done in a sweeping take that we would see again in Singin'; Rita's grand Broadway show in that titanic stage receeding far in the back; the Alter-Ego number above all, a brilliant thing where he's called to out-dance his own reflection.It's marvellous stuff on the whole about a dance that can engage a dream to reveal the true beat of the heart. Turns out that the dream was not fame or money, not the image on the cover, but love for this girl.