Pin Up Girl

I've mentioned before that I'm beginning to warm up to some of the Fox musicals of the 40s, even though musicals aren't my favorite genre. So with that in mind, I DVRed Pin Up Girl when it was on FXM recently.

Betty Grable, unsurprisingly, plays the pin-up girl, here a woman named Lorry Jones. She volunteers at a USO club in Missoula, MO (yes, not Montana), what with the war on. She puts on overlong dance numbers for the solgers about to depart fro the front, gives them signed photos, and gets "engaged" to them even though she understandably doesn't mean it.

Her job is about to change, however, as she and her friend Kay (Dorothea Kent) have taken jobs in the secretarial pool at the Department of the Navy in Washington. Their schedule gives them one free day, so they take a detour to New York. As they're getting off the train, the cross paths with a returning war hero, Tommy Dooley (John Harvey). So Lorry spins a whole bunch of lies to get into the nightclub where Tommy is going to show up. That nightclub is owned by one of Tommy's old friends, Eddie (Joe E. Brown), and the current headliner is Molly (Martha Raye). Lorry, with more lies, wangles her way into performing a song by passing herself off as a broadway performer Laura Lorrain. She thinks this is all harmless because she's only going to be in town for one night and nobody is ever going to see her again.

She doesn't realize how wrong she is. Whom she she and Kay espy on their first day working in Washington DC? Why, it's Tommy Dooley! Lorry is able to fool Tommy by donning Kay's glasses. Tommy wants to meet Lorry's alter ego again, not knowing that his secretary Lorry is the same Laura he met in New York. Tommy's CO, Barney (Eugene Pallette), doesn't want Tommy cavorting with Broadway actresses.

Anyhow, Eddie opens up a new club in Washington, bringing Molly with him. And Tommy, having met "Laura" through Lorry's machinations, tries to get Laura to the club to perform. Molly doesn't like it, so she schemes against Laura. And one of the soldiers from Missoula shows up....

Pin Up Girl is, unfortunately, one of the lesser Fox musicals I've seen. Grable's character is an inveterate liar, and the nature of the lie upon lie is irritating. This isn't like Dick Powell not wanting his relatives to know he's a songwriter; Lorry is just a vindictive liar. The plot is full of holes (nobody in New York figured "Laura" was an imposter?), and worse, the musical numbers are interminable, with the songs being subpar too. Still, fluff like this is probably what audiences of the day wanted.

Pin Up Girl is on DVD courtesy of Fox's MOD scheme. It probably would do better in a box set, as I know I wouldn't pay single DVD prices for this one. Still, some of you may want to judge for yourself the next time it shows up on FXM.