Pin-Up Girl
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Movie Reviews of Pin-Up Girl
Movie Review: A rotten musical, a good print and a fair package
Summary: 2 Stars
This film represents the low point in the splashy Grable musicals released by 20th Century Fox during the war and Hollywood cynicism at its worst. If you are not an ardent Grable fan, you'll hate the film.
With Grable's status as THE pinup girl of the war, a great opportunity was available to produce a really memorable film. Unfortunately, the story/script is really appalling, the lowest of low for a studio which was never known for its great screenplays for its musicals. Bruce Humberstone, a frequently poor director, adds nothing. Grable plays a secretary doubling as a night club performer. As far as plot, that is about it.
In typical Fox fashion, the colour and sound are excellent. Grable looks attractive but the makeup is heavy, particularly the bleached blonde hair. She was pregnant during shooting and the costumes have been designed to hide this. One would hope that Martha Raye and Joe E Brown would help but the material is so bad that they are just noisy and distracting. Most of the songs are lousy too - duds like "Don't Carry Tales". Two redeeming feature - the song "Once too Often" as Hermes Pan and Grable perform a tame Apache dance and the title tune, nicely sung by Grable in close up.
It should be noted that the print of the film in this DVD is excellent and among the extras is an entertaining deleted number which can be seen already in the Hidden Hollywood series. Richard Shickel's commentary, however, while providing lots of information, is delivered with so little vitality that it is hard not to go to sleep.
Movie Review: Terrible, but still entertaining
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a third-rate 1940s musical starring the then-megafamous Betty Grable as a small-town girl whose little fibs keep getting her into big trouble. Actually, things work out pretty well for her: she gets a job headlining a famous nightclub and she marries the man she loves.
What's terrible about this film are the musical numbers: they lack spark and go on way too long, particularly the dreadful "Skating Vanities" sequence, which must clock in at at least ten minutes in length. There's an awful lot of padding here, even for a b-line musical, but like most old movies, it has some fascinating cultural value... There's a not-too-subtle sexual undertone, involving the interactions between USO girls and the military personnel they entertain: the movie opens with a sequence where all three branches of the service implore the hometown gals to be their "pin-up", to which the girls demurely reply that they "know what you mean" but that they can't give them what they want. Later, when Grable's character has conned her way into sitting at a war hero's nightclub table, the sailor and his pal assume that she and her friend are call girls that the club owner has arranged for them... They don't quite put it in those terms, but the message is unmistakable. Nice glimpse into the hormonal rituals of America during wartime... and lots of crazy piled-up hairdos! (Axton)
Movie Review: Mediocre Betty Grable Musical
Summary: 2 Stars
The good news is that Fox finally released a Betty Grable musical on DVD, so I'm guessing fans are really happy about that. The bad news is that, as many have pointed out, they picked one of the worse. The reason seems pretty obvious: Grable is best remembered nowadays precisely for being a WWII "Pin-Up Girl" and, like when this film was first produced, the DVD makers are just banking on that. Betty Grable musicals were formulaic and not particularly sophisticated. They relied too heavily on her charms (and showing off her famous legs), but even her charisma cannot do much to save this movie. If you love Betty Grable no matter what, rejoice the fact that at least one of her musicals is on DVD, if not, then I suggest you skip this one and wait for the DVD release of one of her better movies.