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Masterpiece Movies

Cover Girl (1944)

Shamma M. Raghib

Directed by: Charles Vidor
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Phil Silvers, Eve Arden
Runtime: 107 minutes
Genre: Musicals
Campus Rating: 6.7/10

An entertainer in a Brooklyn nightclub is made a magazine cover girl, gets much attention, and leaves her friends to move on to Broadway. But has she done the right thing?

Rita hasn't been much in classic musicals, but considering this, Cover Girl was her best bet. Rita Hayworth plays Rusty Parker, a dancer paying her dues as part of an assembly of beauties who grace the stage at a Brooklyn club owned by her boyfriend/choreographer Danny McGuire (Kelly). Although life and love are good, Rusty has career aspirations a gazillion times the size of her current professional abode. So when word comes her way that a prominent magazine searching for their next cover girl, she decides to try her luck. But not far behind is fellow chorus-liner/resident backstabber Maurine Martin (Leslie Brooks), who mischievously throws Parker off by encouraging her to be animated and condescending, traits that the assistant to the editor Cornelia Jackson (Eve Arden) isn't looking for in the least.

Thinking she's blown a prime opportunity, Rusty returns to home base a little wiser, and a lot luckier. In the audience for her next performance is the publication's head honcho, John Courdair, who finds himself transfixed by Parker's beauty, which brings back memories of old flame Maribelle Hicks (also Hayworth), whom the gorgeous redhead bears a striking resemblance to. Combined with Courdair's clout and Jackson's favorable second impression, Rusty adorns the next issue of Vanity, but her enthusiasm is tempered by a rather halfhearted response to her, and remains until favorable coverage by local newspapers creates an overnight sensation. In this movie, actors Phil Silvers, everybody's best friend, and Eve Arden, Kruger's acid-tongued assistant, provide comic relief.

The story however has predictable endings (unlike the new movie The Illusionist where I was completely blown away at the end) badly at times, but the fans went home happy thanks to the powerhouse musical numbers, including Long Ago and Far Away and Kelly's famous "alter-ego" dance.

The story takes you through that glamour and media that magazines like Vogue create and in the end when time comes; sometimes some people choose friendship and love over fashion, glamour and all that jazz!
Makes you want to live life as it is doesn't it?

Source: Classic Film Guide