Mother Wore Tights

A movie that's been running in the FXM rotation recently is Mother Wore Tights. It's going to be on FXM again tomorrow at 11:00 AM and Tuesday at 9:20 AM.

Betty Grable plays Myrtle McKinley, the "Mother" of the title, since we see her at the opening retired with her husband and some voiceover from one of the daughters (voiceover provided by Anne Baxter). Flashback to about 1900, when Myrtle was graduating from high school in Oakland, CA, and showing she already had some musical talent.

Myrtle and a couple of her friends head off to San Francisco to start their working lives. One of the friends has a brother who works the box office at the local "opera house" (which was just as much a venue for hosting vaudeville in those days), and apparently told his sister that he could get her a free admission. So all three girls try to get free admission together!

Of course, this draws the attention of the owner/show producer (William Frawley in a one-scene part), and the brother says that these three young women were really there to try out as chorus girls! The producer calls his bluff, and when the three young women go upstairs, Myrtle is the only one not horrified by the request to show the producer their legs. So she's in the show.

It's there that she meets Frank Burt (Dan Dailey), who does a single but who we know is just right for Myrtle, especially since we saw the two of them together before the flashback. But it's going to take a reel or two before they finally wind up together, with Myrtle briefly going on a road show in Los Angeles. Eventually they do wind up together, both on stage and married.

Myrtle has to retire when she gets pregnant, although this being a Code-era movie it's fun to see how they try to get around saying the word "pregnant". Eventually Myrtle has two girls: Iris (who as a young adult will be played by Mona Freeman) and Mikey (Connie Marshall). Mother and the two daughters live with Grandma (Sara Allgood), at least until Frank needs a new partner for his act.

The kids start to grow up, and on one family vacation they go to a resort that's incredibly boring for everybody, except Iris once she meets Bob. She's got a boyfriend now, but there is one catch: Bob's parents are wealthy Wall Street types, and Iris is worried about what everybody is going to think when they find out that she's got parents who perform on the stage. This even after Mom and Dad sends the kids to a boarding school close to where Bob is going to Harvard.

Mother Wore Tights is the first pairing of Betty Grable and Dan Dailey, and it's typical of the sort of movie the two would make as well as the sort of nostalgic musical that Fox was putting out in the 1940s. It's amiable entertainment, with Technicolor that probably could use a restoration, and an undemanding plot. There's nothing really wrong with the movie, but also nothing that will make it stand out against any of the other Fox musicals. I can't help but think there would have been something more interesting if the movie had Mothra wearing tights, or if Betty Grable had been paired with noir heavy Dan Duryea instead of Dan Dailey.

Still, if you want to sit down and watch with something that's just going to entertain you, you could do a lot worse than to watch Mother Wore Tights. In addition to the FXM showings, it got a DVD release courtesy of Fox's MOD scheme.