Pin Up Girl (1944)

The greatest movie ever made..!

An action-packed slog

Am I Missing Something?

A lot of fun.

With the title of Pin Up Girl this film could only star Betty Grable. As the GI favorite in World War II only Rita Hayworth ranked up there with Betty and those legs.With a plot thin as a Gillette razor blade and a leading man who is the definition of bland Betty and the rest of the talented musical cast carry this one. But make no mistake she's box office draw.Betty is a USO hostess in Missouri and she and friend Dorothea Kent get the call to serve as typists in the Navy Department. But that's after first going to New York and appearing in Joe E. Brown's nightclub and scoring a big hit. Betty's also a big hit with John Harvey, medal winner from the South Pacific now on shore duty.But after getting a lecture from another desk bound sailor Eugene Palette, Harvey thinks Betty's just using him as a career booster. So what does Betty do? She puts on a pair of glasses and fools Harvey until the final moments of the film that she's someone else. It does work for Clark Kent and as I remember also for Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman.But with all those numbers from folks like Martha Raye, Charlie Spivak's Orchestra, the Condos brothers, but most of all Betty who really cares about a truly silly plot. Pin-Up Girl cleaned up at the box office, made a lot of money for Darryl Zanuck and 20th Century Fox.The last number with Betty drilling the WACS was a thinly disguised attempt to hide her pregnancy. She hated the number and everyone else did including me.No deep thoughts here, just sheer entertainment.

Betty Grable and Fox capitalizing (but not crassly) on the musical star's real-life pin-up status with WWII-era soldiers by casting her as a Washington, D.C. secretary who moonlights on the weekends as an entertainer with the U.S.O. Via some innocent and girlish, wide-eyed deception, she wins the heart of a Naval war hero who is led to believe she's a Broadway headliner. Grable doesn't sport the one-piece swimsuit she wears in that legendary pin-up, nor she does exploit her famous legs. Rather, she's displayed here as a nice, decent, small town lass who has somehow allowed several dozen soldiers to propose marriage to her (she doesn't take the offers seriously, so why should the men?). In between fabrications and costume changes, Grable sings, dances, and (most improbably) gets to play drill sergeant to a large company of WAC's in precision march. This last number is quite a mad capper for the picture, which maniacally represents a bygone era of nightclubs, canteens, novelty songs, and rollerskating dancers sporting red, white, or blue ostrich-feather fans. Martha Raye sings too (and gets to have a surprisingly catty side) before she and Grable's pal Dorothea Kent are both unceremoniously forgotten about midway through the film. ** from ****

Not bad, not good for a Betty Grable flick. Story, like all the Fox musicals on the 40's is silly, but sometimes silly can be charming. PIN-UP GIRL focuses on Betty of course and those "million" dollar legs. The story of a want-to-be showgirl who is doing steno work could have somehow worked better with more fluid writing. A couple of good dance numbers, but nothing spectacular. Nice to see old timers Martha Raye and Joe E. Brown, but Martha plays a real witch in this one and takes the shine off her comedic talent. Too bad. Story itself does not focus and what happened to her girl friend, Dorthea Kent, who is in the first part of the movie, then is dropped like a hot potato. Her presence was missed as she was a good side kick to Betty. If you're a Betty Grable fan, and you must be to be reading about this movie, there are others a lot better. Too bad they're not available on DVD. By the way, the DVD transfer is quite nice.

Note that the legendary Hermes Pan is the guy dancing with Grable in the wild "Once Too Often" number. He was the guy who worked with Fred Astaire to choreograph and practice most of his dance numbers in the 30's Fred-and-Ginger films.