The Dolly Sisters

So I watched The Dolly Sisters on FXM Retro this morning in order to do a blog post on it seeing as it's going to be on again tomorrow morning at 7:35 AM.

Jenny (Betty Grable) and Rosie (June Haver) Dolly were real-life twin sisters born in Hungary in 1892. They emigrated to the US with their parents at about the age of 13; the first change in the movie is that they emigrate with their uncle Letsie (S.Z. Sakall). The two have talent which they immediately show off by dancing to one of Liszt's Hungarian dances. Fast forward to 1912, and they're still dancing but getting nowhere. But their uncle and booking manager (Sig Ruman) get them a job up in Elmira, which ultimately leads to bigger things.

On the train to Elmira, they meet a nice young man Harry Fox (John Payne) who, as it turns out, is also going to Elmira to perform at the vaudeville hall there. In real life, Harry was a real person and Jenny's dance partner; in the movie, this has been changed into a singer-songwriter presumably to allow for the inclusion of more songs into the movie. Harry and Jenny immediately fall in love, and that's going to set the dramatic conflict for the rest of the movie. The Dolly Sisters are a sister act, and there's no room in a sister act for a man, at least not according to Rosie and Letsie. Jenny loves her sister and the sister act, but also loves Harry.

The conflict goes on like this. Jenny and Harry part ways for a while during which time the sisters eventually become big. And then Harry runs into Jenny again and she makes him a hit with the song "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows"; the two finally get married. But there's the lure of the stage and a big engagement in Paris for the sisters, while Harry winds up enlisting once the US joins World War I. After the war, Harry wants Jenny to return to the States with him, while Rosie meets a department store magnate Irving Netcher (another real person, played by Frank Latimore). He loves her, but she's still not ready to dtich the sister act.

What eventually does break up the sister act is that Irving gives Rosie an ultimatum, while Jenny decides to run off with the first man she meets. Technically, it's a duke who's been chasing her for some time (Reginald Gardiner). While eloping to marry, Jenny gets in a serious car accident (again, something that happened in real life).

The Dolly Sisters is the sort of movie that people who enjoy the Fox musicals of the 1940s will love. Everybody does a good enough job here, although the production values aren't quite as high as you get from an MGM musical. The plot is nothing new (indeed, I was reminded of Alexander's Ragtime Band by the end), although it's in service of all those musical numbers which take the bulk of the running time. Some of the numbers are odd, such as one dedicated to cosmetics.

What I found far more interesting is reading up on the Dolly sisters afterward to see how Fox changed details of their lives to make for a Hollywood story. In real life, Jenny and Harry did get a divorce and that was that; there's a coda in the movie to make for a Hollywood ending. Far more fascinating is that Hollywood completely overlooked the fact that Rosie got married just one year after Jenny, and that they kept their careers going while being married. Indeed, the movie portrays Irving as the only man in Rosie's life. In real life he wasn't in the picture until after the Dollys' retirement.

The Dolly Sisters is a well-made movie and certainly worth a watch. And there is a Betty Grable box set available for purchase on both Amazon and the TCM Shop that has the movie. But it's not quite a true story.