Government Girl

I only saw this movie once on AMC (before they started showing recent "classics". I loved it. Sure, it is a war propaganda film, loaded with patriotism. Sure it is written to the largely female audiences of the time. Sure, it is a pale imitation of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "His Girl Friday". It is still a fun, witty, movie.

It is also possibly the best use of Washington, DC as a location. They get the geography right. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (one of my favorites) has people going in every direction. "Government Girl" keeps everything in its place. Also, it provides an historic look at wartime DC.

Tell me where I can find this movie, as I would love to see it again.

In the Citadel Film Series book on The Films of Olivia DeHavilland, her winding up in Government Girl was a great illustration of how the contract players were treated at the studios. Just like baseball players in those days before the reserved clause was abolished.

As we all know Olivia had worked with David O. Selznick before and she was excited when Jack Warner who just could not see her as anything but arm candy for Errol Flynn and other of his heroic leading men optioned her off to Selznick again. Maybe she would get a part as good as Melanie Hamilton.

But Selznick called off whatever film he was going to do with her and took his option and sent DeHavilland packing to RKO where she was put in this minor league comedy Government Girl. She did the film, hating every minute of it and resolved once and for all to challenge the studio system and its control of its players. Just like Curt Flood later challenging the reserved clause in baseball.

Although she overacts outrageously in a part that someone like Jean Arthur might have been better in, DeHavilland does well in this comedy about wartime Washington, DC. My aunt was such a Government Girl during those World War II and she met her husband who was a 4-F in those years because of a history of tuberculosis. I'd like to think they had such hijinks during those years.

America was truly mobilized then and people like Sonny Tufts who were business executives were called in and gladly served on the home-front, organizing the nation's industrial and agricultural might. He appropriates her hotel room using his big-shot status on a night when Olivia was helping friend and Anne Shirley try to get in some quality honeymooning with her bridegroom James Dunn. And then of course Olivia who knows the Washington power scene inside and out finds out she's going to be Tufts's secretary. But I don't think I need tell you more.

Oddly enough DeHavilland is romanced by Tufts, Jess Barker who later married Susan Hayward and Paul Stewart. Barker is a slimy young man on the make working for a Senate Investigating Committee having to do with keeping the graft at a minimum in the war effort. Senator Harry Davenport employs him for reasons not altogether clear. In real life I doubt Senator Harry Truman employed anyone like Barker.

Through his own naiveté Tufts winds up in a jackpot before the Davenport Committee. And it takes a Government Girl like Olivia DeHavilland to bail him out.

For her legion of fans this was not Olivia's finest hour and a half on screen.

If you're looking for laughs, this comedy may disappoint. Surprisingly, the usually restrained De Havilland over-acts egregiously, just about chewing up the scenery in the process. As Smokey, the government girl, it's like she's trying much too hard. On the other hand, the much derided Sonny Tufts comes off best in a slyly bemused performance as the can-do industrialist. At a comedy level, the movie's uneven, at best.

As a glimpse of wartime Washington, however, the movie delivers in revealing ways. Note the unusually crowded scenes in the early part. Newly arriving office workers mix with service men and women, all flocking to staff the explosion of paper work. Naturally, the sudden influx creates a room shortage, which the movie amusingly illustrates with the frustrated newly-weds. There's also the gossipy intrigue of the high-class salons and drawing rooms, where careers can be made or broken. Then there's Brown's (Tufts) tussle with red tape, while trying to get his bomber production up and running. And, of course, the year being 1943, it all ends with a patriotic flyover presaging the Allied victory to come.

Not many wartime films deal with the administrative phase of the war effort. This, I believe, is one of the few, and from that standpoint the movie remains an interesting, if rather frantic, curiosity.

Dudley Nichols, the director of "Government Girl", working with Budd Schulberg on the script, gave us this look of America during the years of WWII. This is a move of how every department in Washington was taken over by thousands of women who descended on the capital to help with the war effort.

The housing problem of the times is clearly shown as we watch the opening sequence when Ed Browne arrives in Washington without a reservation for a hotel. Because his name is in the newspaper, he is given the honeymoon suite that young Sgt. Blake and May, were going to use for that purpose.

Smokey Allard comes to the rescue as she tries to give the couple a place where they can be together, but makes the mistake of taking them into the "only women" rooming house where she and May share a tiny apartment.

This comedy shows us a slice of life in Washington in those years. Even though there was a war going on, there is always optimism, as that conflict was a just one, in the minds of all Americans of that era. We are shown how Ed Browne is instrumental in setting up the factories that will produce the bombers that were key in winning the war in Europe and in the Pacific.

Olivia de Havilland makes a sunny "Smokey" Allard. Even when playing roles that didn't demand much of her acting abilities, this actress makes us like her because of the charisma she projected. Sunny Tufts is good as this unsophisticated Ed Browne who is mired in the bureaucracy he encounters in Washington. Ann Shirley, James Dunn, Paul Stewart, and Agnes Moorehead complete the excellent cast.

While the movie doesn't break new ground, it's pleasant enough for a few laughs and a nostalgic look at that period.

Sonny Tufts, high energy but unorthodox management type, has just arrived in Washington to step up airplane production. Olivia de Havilland, the "government girl" assigned to assist him, quickly realizes that the biggest part of her job is showing Tufts just how D.C. works.

The plot isn't much but it's the kind of material that ought to make a great comedy—part satire, part romance, lots of patriotism and snappy dialog....Unfortunately, this picture mixes in bits of all of those elements but never quite manages to put any of them over the top.

Olivia de Havilland is fine as the title character and it's fun to watch her play broad comedy. There's a great shot of her sitting behind her desk, shoes off, feet up, smoking a cigarette and reading a book. She looks good and it's fun seeing her in modern dress. (Sure, she made plenty of "modern" movies but many of her most famous roles were period pieces. Here she dresses like neither Melanie Wilkes nor Maid Marian, and she looks comfortable.)

However, it just seems like there isn't enough for her actually to do: one of the recurring gags in the film is de Havilland racing across the office then racing back to her desk, having forgotten to put on her shoes. That's kind of funny but no matter how cutely performed it's just not hilarious.

Ann Shirley is rather lively as de Havilland's friend. Shirley and soldier James Dunn are just married, but they can't seem to find a place to live, or even get a little privacy before Dunn's leave is over. They exchange some corny dialog (Shirley: Oh, wouldn't it be awful if ya got killed before our honeymoon? Dunn: For me it'd be just as bad after!) and are generally cute if silly.

Overall, this is of those well-meaning pictures that's pleasant enough but just a bit dull.