Betty Grable

[Glebb]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 4:58am

How lucky that Betty Grable's 'Sweet Rosie O'Grady' - (1943) is on!
Finally seeing my first Betty Grable movie. Yay!

[Glebb]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 5:02am

What a Doll!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 7:22am

Let's write a tune that's play-able,
A ditty swing-and-sway-able,
Or say whatever's say-able
About the Tower of Bay-a-bel.
Let's cheer for the career of
Itty-bitty Betty Gray-a-ble,
But let's not talk about love!

(Cole Porter)

[Unknown User]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 8:36am

Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield wrote a wonderful, heartfelt homage to Betty, check it out...

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 9:02am

Betty Grable may have been marvelous in movies, but she was the weakest of the great ladies who played Dolly during the original run. The poor woman seemed lost on stage and too darn pretty to have remained a widow for so long.

She was much better in a summer tour of GUYS AND DOLLS a few years later.

[best12bars]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 9:46am

Glebby, you have to check out Pin Up Girl and The Dolly Sisters.

Two of my favorite Grable movies!

Updated On: 5/28/07 at 09:46 AM

[Glebb]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 10:17am

I've been curious about "The Dolly Sisters" every since Carol Burnett's "The Doily Sisters".

[best12bars]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 10:41am

I wish the Carol Burnett Show movie spoofs would be released in a DVD set! They were so damn funny.

[Glebb]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 10:54am

PS - I just noticed that there must be a corps of ice skaters in "Pin Up Girl", no? Oh and Martha Raye? I so want to see it.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 9:28pm

A Betty Grable thread? I knew I had a reason to post here tonight...

SWEET ROSIE O'GRADY is not one of my favorite Grable films (I much prefer her previous 1943 film CONEY ISLAND) but it is tantalizing to imagine what it might have been. Fox originally announced that Gene Kelly would be Betty's co-star, and when the loan could not be arranged, MGM gave the non-singing, non- dancing Robert Young as a consolation prize.

I do love "My Heart Tells Me" - a forgotten Harry Wardon-Mack Gordon gem that deserves to be 'covered' more.

[Glebb]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 9:39pm

Actually Chicago's GALINDA, Erin MacKey looks a lot like Betty Grable to me, at least facially.

[Glebb]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 9:41pm

Erin MacKey

[tazber]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 9:41pm

B12B,

are those marquee musical dvds a new series? I just bought
Can-Can and On the Riviera and they both had that on top.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 10:13pm

One Grable musical - my favorite - that has not made it yet to DVD is BILLY ROSE'S DIAMOND HORSESHOE (1945). With a sensitively written, uncommonly smart script by George Seaton, a great Warren-Gordon score (including "The More I See You", "In Acapulco" and "I Wish I Know") and co-starring Dick Haymes, William Gaxton, Phil Silvers and wisecracking Beatrice Kaye (a real 'Diamond Horseshoe' entertainer who made very few films) it offers Grable's best acting performance - she's much less manic than usual, warm and funny and is (I think) at her most beautiful.

Even Bosley Crowther (who hated Fox musicals and Grable especially) had this to say: "Seldom have business and pleasure been conjoined to such a notable degree as they are in Twentieth Century-Fox's new picture, "Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe." At least a million dollars worth of fanfare for Mr. Rose's New York night club is ballyhooed by this far from modest pageant, which came to the Roxy yesterday, and it is also a snappy entertainment in the strictly gala musical-spectacle line. That's because all the standard ingredients of such fare have been pleasantly combined with a book of more than average life and humor, and it has all been directed cheerfully.

Don't groan when we tell you that it's another backstage boy-girl romance, because it happens that the author and director, George Seaton, had mildly kidded the idea. He has taken a stage-struck young doctor and a gold-digging night club girl and has juggled them cutely in a love-duel which makes—now, get this!—psychological fun. That is to say, the little lady has what the lad calls a "mink coat complex" and he has what she discovers to be a self-demonstration urge. Together they solve their complexes in a neatly conventional way....Betty Grable plays the glamorous cutie with considerable down-to-earthiness, and Dick Haymes is surprisingly natural as the wishful young medico. William Gaxton plays the latter's hoofing father with real grease-paint authority and Phil Silvers has some big opportunities to be amusing—and makes the most of them."

(fun review of the Yvonne DeCarlo epic, SALOME, WHERE SHE DANCED at the link as well)
NY TIMES review of BILLY ROSE'S DIAMOND HORSEHOE

[cturtle]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 11:19pm

i saw her as DOLLY also ... and as i recall, she used every possible chance to pull her skirt up to expose her gams :)

[Glebb]

Posted: 7/2/07 at 8:24am

[Glebb]

Posted: 7/5/07 at 10:40am

Finally saw PIN UP GIRL - 1944. PIN UP GIRL is super great!
Betty is in top form - funny, sweet, clever, great dancer. In one number she's sporting the hugest pompadour I've ever seen. Eva Peron must have been gaga over Betty.
Ending doesn't fit as well today as I'm sure it did in 44.
Wow - how much was Bette Midler influenced by Martha Raye?
This is one I'll soon need for my DVD collection.

[Mamie]

Posted: 7/5/07 at 10:47am

She was gorgeous but also just seemed so darned nice that you wished she lived next door!

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 7/5/07 at 1:05pm

What a GREAT screen recap from PIN-UP GIRL, Mamie!

Here's a cute still of Betty at Paramount in THRILL OF A LIFETIME - with Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Eleanore Whitney, "Buster" Crtabbe (in one of those form-hugging 1930s men's swimsuits) and Lief Ericson.

She does like that pose, huh?

[Mamie]

Posted: 7/5/07 at 1:09pm

Well, Betty was one of the few people who looked just as good walking away as she did walking to you!