Girl Rush

Girl Rush was a milestone picture in the career of Robert Mitchum, it marked his first appearance in an RKO Studios film. Within two years Mitchum would be their number one leading actor. But in Girl Rush he is billed behind the comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney, Frances Langford and Barbara Jo Allen better known as Vera Vague from the Bob Hope radio show.

Brown and Carney are the comics in a traveling road show of mostly women which has a sudden decline in business when gold is discovered and everyone runs off to prospect. What to do, but Carney and Brown go with the prospects for prospecting.

Girl Rush takes a leaf from the plot of Paint Your Wagon when the boys arrive at their destination and discover the men there have no feminine diversion. I don't think I have to go any further. Women as a commodity could be more valuable than gold.

Mitchum plays the part of the young cowboy who has needs and one look at Frances Langford and he knows those needs will be satisfied. And if they have kids, she can sing them lullabies. Frances who a few years earlier introduced I'm In The Mood For Love and I've Got You Under My Skin does not get anything near as good to those classics in the score here.

Vera Vague has a thing for Carney which he does not reciprocate and he's real glad when Paul Hurst takes a liking to her. She had the same kind of relationship with Bob Hope on his show, the kind Hope later developed with Phyllis Diller.

Girl Rush is a pleasant enough film and in his next film Robert Mitchum would get top billing in a western called Nevada. If things had gone differently Mitchum would have wound up as a cowboy actor, but he was destined for much bigger things.