One of those movies that shows up often enough on TCM because it's an MGM picture, but that I never actually watched before, is Les Girls. With that in mind, I recorded it the last time it was on. It's getting another airing tomorrow (Feb. 21) at 10:15 AM, so now is a good time to watch the movie and do the post on it here.
The movie opens up in London, as a Lady Wren (Kay Kendall) is on trial for libel. She's written her memoirs, and one of the people she discusses in those memoirs, Angèle Ducros (Taina Elg) is none too pleased about what the good Lady wrote. Hence the lawsuit, which is making big news. Now, somewhat oddly to me although I don't know the finer points of British civil law in this regard, it's the defendant who's on the stand first.
Flash back several years to Paris (this being a civil trial it's happening in London because presumably the book was published there with with Lady Wren being British). Lady Wren is not yet Lady Wren, but a young woman with the given name Sybil who is a dancer and singer in a follies-type show that Barry Nichols (Gene Kelly) has been putting on called Les Girls. Also in the show is Barry himself, as well as American Joy Henderson (Mitzi Gaynor). They need a third woman, and Barry eventually picks Angèle. Now, one of Barry's rules is that the women are going to have to leave the show if they get married, since he understands that juggling marriage and being on the road just isn't going to work. Despite the fact that Sybil is already being pursued by Sir Gerald Wren, it's Angèle who is currently closest to getting married, to Pierre Ducros (Jacques Bergerac). There's also the question of Barry, as Sybil claims Barry is a playboy and that Angèle is interested in him. Angèle can't have Barry, of course, and in Sybil's telling of the story, the somewhat flighty Angèle eventually tries to commit suicide by turning on the gas as a result.
Now, of course, we know that the suicide attempt didn't succeed, and that both Sybil and Angèle will wind up married to the men who were pursuing them at the beginning of the movie, since everything is told in flashback. But, in any case, Sybil having put forward her story in evidence, it's time for Angèle to take the stand. She unsurprisingly has a somewhat different story. Sybil liked to drink, and despite having to keep Sir Gerald a secret, she's also trying to go after Barry. She's not, but that's a little white lie Joy and Angèle cooked up to keep Gerald from seeing his fiancée drunk. That lie causes other problems, of course. The troupe tries to fix things by taking a sojourn to Spain, but Sybil's drinking is enough of a problem that Barry is going to have to let her go, which leads Sybil, not Angèle, to try to commit suicide.
As you can see, these two stories are diametrically opposed, so to try to solve the case, the judge brings in someone more or less neutral in all this: Barry Nichols himself, who's flown in from America. We get the impression that if he's interested in any of Les Girls, it's Joy, since he's got pictures of her in his apartment. When he learns that both Sybil and Angèle have suitors, and the suitors approach him to try to come up with a way to solve the problem without hurting the women, Barry does something that reveals what really happened in Paris, and in a way that all of the principals are more or less happy in the end.
I've said before that I'm not the biggest fan of musicals, although when it comes to those that I prefer it tends to be the backstage musical, since at least in those cases the reasons for having the musical numbers makes more sense. Les Girls is most certainly in that vein, and coming up with a dramatic structure that's much like Rashomon is a very bright idea indeed. To be honest, the musical numbers here aren't the most memorable, with the exception of one between Kelly and Gaynor where he's parodying Marlon Brando in The Wild One. That aside, Les Girls also works as a 1950s version of the courtroom comedy, with enjoyable performances from all the main players.
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