Pin Up Girl ** (1944, Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye, Joe E Brown, Eugene Pallette) – Classic Movie Review 11,606

Director Bruce Humberstone’s 1944 20th Century Fox Technicolor musical romantic comedy film Pin Up Girl provides the obvious title for top World War Two wartime pin-up Betty Grable in a modest, lightly amusing musical, in which she plays Lorry Jones, a hostess at a Missouri military canteen. On a trip to New York City, she and her best friend, Kay Pritchett (Dorothea Kent) go out partying and are welcomed by a handsome war hero, sailor Tommy Dooley (John Harvey). Lorry pretends to be a Broadway star to be with Tommy. The sailors force her to perform so that, in the end, her talent outs and she becomes a real star.

This thin yarn is a reasonable peg for virtually non-stop wartime songs and dancing, all very moderate, apart from Grable’s Apache dance routine with choreographer Hermes Pan and military drill at the head of 60 girls singing ‘I’ll Be Marching to a Love Song’. Martha Raye (as club star singer Molly McKay) and Joe E Brown (as club owner Eddie Hall) are broad comedy turns but are seemingly effortlessly funny and appealing as always, and Eugene Pallette is amusing too as Barney Briggs.

The screenplay is adapted by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan and Earl Baldwin based on a short story titled Imagine Us (1942) by Libbie Block.

It is produced by William LeBaron for 20th Century Fox.

Betty Grable’s famous swimsuit photo.

Pin Up Girl stresses Grable’s iconic pin-up status, using her famous swimsuit photo in the movie. It looks more kitsch and campy now, but it must have been sexy back in the war era.

Maybe sensing they had a thin yarn on their hands, 20th Century Fox studio decided to change the movie from a comedy into musical and to replace Linda Darnell with Grable, seven months pregnant when shooting ended.

The cast are Betty Grable as Lorry Jones/ Laura Lorraine, John Harvey as Tommy Dooley, Martha Raye as Molly McKay, Joe E Brown as Eddie Hall, Eugene Pallette as Barney Briggs, Dorothea Kent as Kay Pritchett, Dave Willock as Dud Miller, Charlie Spivak as Himself (bandleader), Roger Clark as Marine Sgt. George Davis (uncredited), Nat ‘King’ Cole as Canteen Pianist, Hermes Pan as Apache Dancer, Adele Jergens as Canteen Worker, Bess Flowers as Arriving Club Diplomacy Patron, June Hutton as Singer with Spivak Band, Reed Hadley as Radio Announcer (voice), Lillian Porter as Cigarette Girl and Robert Homans.

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,606

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