How to Be Very, Very Popular

Unlike the others who have commented on this film, I really enjoyed it. It is on my personal top-10 list of comedies. I like the fact that the two female stars (Grable and North) do not spend the whole movie prancing around in their skimpy dancing costumes--this is a comedy, not soft-core porn! I especially enjoyed the performance by Mr Coburn, who played the president of the college. His scenes, especially the one where he all-but-ignores the beautiful girl (North) on his lap while he fondly recalls an amorous episode from his own student days, make the movie for me. I did not know anything (before reading it here) about the Marilyn Monroe connection to this film, but I am glad she did not appear in it, as I have always thought her over-rated, both as a beauty queen and as an actress. Miss North was far better for the part. It has been at least 10 years since I last saw this, but I still remember much of it, and would gladly watch it again.

With all the violence and utter filth passing as "art" coming out these days (and I don't mean the sexual sort, I mean actual filth- like graphic displays of meanness in all it's forms), how can anyone say THIS is a bad movie?! No, it's not. It's not bad AT ALL.

I like this. Haven't finished yet, but I'm confident I'll still feel the same by the end, cause the fact is, a movie of this era and type just wasn't capable of being bad- ever. And anyone who thinks it is just has no idea what an actual "bad movie" is!

But yes, this harmless bit of cute fun is what passed for "bad" back in the day, and that we today still label it as such when we should know better by now is a real shame.

GOOD movie.

Betty Grable's farewell film turned out to be a third and final version of She Loves Me Not. As She Loves Me Not and True To The Army were done at Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox must have shelled out a lot of money for the rights. It was not money well spent.

Even though Bob Cummings was supposed to be a college student even the youthful looking Cummings wasn't that young to carry it off. And that was using the fact that he was a perpetual student in the place, paid for with Grandpa's trust fund. Tommy Noonan and Orson Bean weren't convincing as college kids either.

The same plot gimmick was used, nightclub dancer witnesses murder and flees the scene. This time however it was two girls Betty Grable and Sheree North, a pair of strippers in a clip joint who see one of their own murdered while doing her bumps and grinds. They have a front row seat for the crime, but leave real quick and go as far as their money takes them.

Which is a small college town where the guys all go to school. Noonan fancies himself a hypnotist, but has no success with any other subject other than North and that was by accident. Then North goes into a Marilyn Monroe imitation for the rest of the film, climaxed when she does a striptease at the graduation ceremonies making that pretty unforgettable.

Monroe turned this one down and I think wisely. Her next film was Bus Stop one of her immortal successes. Sheree North did much better work in the future, this was not a film she would have liked to be remembered for.

As for Grable, according to a recent biography she liked working with Bob Cummings whom she had worked with in one of her big successes Moon Over Miami at her height. But while Cummings, pun intended gives it the old college try, Betty looks just plain bored throughout. No wonder she left Hollywood and concentrated on stage, television, and the nightclubs the rest of her life.

Nunnally Johnson wrote and directed this and with him at the helm and the cast he assembled with people like Rhys Williams, Fred Clark, Charles Coburn, and Alice Pearce you would have thought something better would have come forth.

How To Be Very Very Popular wasn't with me.

This film is sadly embarrassing for many reasons, perhaps the most glaring, initially, is its complete disrespect and misuse of Betty Grable whose scenes really are few and far between. Both Grable and the terrific Sheree North are wearing raincoats for most of the film, the latter only coming to life (she is hypnotized for most of the 'epic') during one sex-sational dance number. Grable's legs are seen once or twice, but there is no song, no number for her to do...YET, amidst the rubble, Grable's growing craft as a comedienne are visible momentarily. The culprits in this disaster are the inept writers and, of all people, director Nunnally Johnson (didn't he know any better?). The dialog is a blithering mess... and the plot meanders across a landmine of sloppy character developments and plot machinations. Robert Cummings and Tommy Noonan are pretty awful in dreadfully written parts. Orson Bean and Alice Pearce occasionally show a bit of humor. Sheree North, a fine dancer and, later in her career, one of the most under-appreciated and excellent actresses ('No Down Payment' as an example) can merely show her adorable self. The plot plods along with no sense, and has an ending that is disgracefully sloppy for a professional unit. (Whatever plot came from Howard Lindsay's play is missing). Had Johnson tried an out-and-out farce, it might have been a little funny, because the cast understands comedy. But this entire 'romp' thumps down to a disastrous level. Pity the talented two blonde stars. One merit - you can see, briefly, the lovely Charlotte Austin who went on to a very slight film career.

The film starts off as if I was seeing "Some Like it Hot" years before. Two strip-tease dancers witness the shooting death of a Chinese stripper on stage and are pursued by police and the killer alike. Sounds funny and promising but the film soon falls into a trap of utter stupidity.

Bette Grable (too old for the part) and Sheree North are the two fleeing strippers who wind up in a college dormitory and cause mayhem there. North is accidentally hypnotized by Tommy Noonan and spends much of the picture in a hypnotic state. How fortunate for her.

There are two really good performances here by Charles Coburn, as the college dean, more interested in the college getting money than actually providing education and Alice Pearce, as a wacky housemother in the school.

Fred Clark, as the millionaire father, who doesn't know that his son, Orson Bean, has been expelled is given the part of the guy getting hit over the head as he is confused with the killer. Rhys Williams gets the same treatment as North's father.

Bette Grable plays Stormy Tornado. Stormy? This storm blew out to sea. Big-time.