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Three for the Show

  • 1955
  • Approved
  • 1h 33m
IMDb RATING
6.1/10
513
YOUR RATING
Three for the Show (1955)
Musical

A widowed singer marries her deceased husband's songwriting partner which leads to trouble when her former husband turns up very much alive.A widowed singer marries her deceased husband's songwriting partner which leads to trouble when her former husband turns up very much alive.A widowed singer marries her deceased husband's songwriting partner which leads to trouble when her former husband turns up very much alive.

  • Director
    • H.C. Potter
  • Writers
    • Edward Hope
    • Leonard Stern
    • W. Somerset Maugham
  • Stars
    • Betty Grable
    • Marge Champion
    • Gower Champion
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.1/10
    513
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • H.C. Potter
    • Writers
      • Edward Hope
      • Leonard Stern
      • W. Somerset Maugham
    • Stars
      • Betty Grable
      • Marge Champion
      • Gower Champion
    • 16User reviews
    • 2Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos11

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    Top cast68

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    Betty Grable
    Betty Grable
    • Julie Lowndes
    Marge Champion
    Marge Champion
    • Gwen Howard
    Gower Champion
    Gower Champion
    • Vernon Lowndes
    Jack Lemmon
    Jack Lemmon
    • Martin 'Marty' Stewart
    Myron McCormick
    Myron McCormick
    • Mike Hudson
    David Ahdar
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    Leon Alton
    Leon Alton
    • Stage Manager
    • (uncredited)
    Tom Anthony
    • Bit Role
    • (uncredited)
    Robert Bice
    Robert Bice
    • Sgt. Charlie O'Hallihan
    • (uncredited)
    Bill Boes
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    Eugene Borden
    • Costume Designer
    • (uncredited)
    Johnny Brazil
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    Eddie Brown
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    George Bruggeman
    George Bruggeman
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    Aileen Carlyle
    • Mother
    • (uncredited)
    Beulah Christian
    • Wardrobe Woman
    • (uncredited)
    Gene Dailey
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    John David
    • Male Harem Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • H.C. Potter
    • Writers
      • Edward Hope
      • Leonard Stern
      • W. Somerset Maugham
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews16

    6.1513
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    Featured reviews

    5bkoganbing

    "The Original Two For One Girl"

    What an interesting pedigree Three For The Show had, dating all the way back to 1920 when W. Somerset Maugham's play Too Many Husbands debuted on Broadway with a long forgotten cast. It had a military background instead of a show business one, though the military does figure prominently in the plot.

    Collaborators Jack Lemmon and Gower Champion have a hit show on Broadway for producer Myron McCormick that stars Betty Grable. Lemmon goes into the Air Force during the Korean War and goes MIA. He's reported killed and Grable who was married to Lemmon, now marries Champion. Then of course Lemmon returns and they've a situation the reverse of My Favorite Wife.

    In the meantime poor Marge Champion is champing at the bit because she's got a thing for Gower. I think you can figure out where this one is going.

    The numbers come from a variety of sources, some original, some Broadway, some classical. Betty Grable in what proved to be her next to last film did more serious type dancing here than in any other. But next to the Champions, she really did not look that good. It was unfair to cast her with them.

    Grable also did not like working for Harry Cohn, she was used to another imperious studio mogul over at 20th Century Fox who had kind of eased her out of her number one spot for the fast rising Marilyn Monroe. But she thought he was a pussycat next to Cohn. Two For The Show was Betty's first outside film after 14 year at Fox.

    Jack Lemmon proved to have a couple of good singing notes as he does accompany the rest on a number or two. He liked working with Grable because he felt she was unpretentious with a good sense of humor as apparently a lot of her colleagues did.

    As a film though, Three For The Show will never rank first rate in the work of either Lemmon or Grable.
    10davidallen-84122

    My taste may be questionable but there you have it.

    Much has been said to deride this film, it's stars, it's musical format and general premise but I enjoy it from start to finish. Another musical (from Britain) also released in the mid-fifties ; "Let's Be Happy" was equally dismissed by critics and public and both films are remembered by devotees only. It's a pity that both of these musicals brought to a cruel halt the film careers of Betty Grable and Vera-Ellen respectively ; two of filmdom's brightest and loveliest ladies still in their prime.

    The above mentioned musicals are two of my favourites and how overjoyed I am that they have both been preserved on DVD in wide-screen and glorious colour. I'm one very satisfied customer.
    6moonspinner55

    Betty Grable working for Columbia in her last year of making movies: results tolerable if lacking in zest...

    Musical version of 1940's "Too Many Husbands", via W. Somerset Maugham's play "Home and Beauty" (which the author said he wrote as a lark), has widowed--and remarried--Broadway star in a marital quandary: her first husband's death overseas was misreported by the US Air Force (he was actually marooned on an island), and now she has two husbands...and both marriages legal! Betty Grable toys with the possibilities--she even fantasizes a musical number with dozens of suitors housed in cages, climaxing with she and her two husbands under the sheets smoking a hookah! But, this being 1955, we instead have Betty ordering both her husbands out of her boudoir come bedtime. The plot predicament, not surprisingly, doesn't come to much, but in the interim we have some bright moments, not the least of which is Grable's Marilyn Monroe-like delivery in the final number, "How Come You Do Me Like You Do" (which sounds a lot like MM's "Lazy" with a design resembling her "Heat Wave"). Director H. C. Potter opens the picture with a berserk pantomime number danced to "Someone To Watch Over Me" (in harlequin costumes!), but he gets good performances from both Grable and Jack Lemmon (who also sings a little and dances a bit). As the second couple, Marge and Gower Champion dance nicely together but don't have much pizzazz, much like the rest of "Three For the Show". A pleasant marquee-filler but hardly a headliner. **1/2 from ****
    drednm

    Blah Betty

    This is a remake of TOO MANY HUSBANDS, which had starred Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, and Melvyn Douglas. Here, we get a tepid musical with Betty Grable and Jack Lemmon and Gower Champion as the male leads. The plot has been dismissed in favor of some musical numbers oddly built around decades-old Gershwin songs. Marge Champion and Myron McCormick co-star.

    Lemmon has been proclaimed dead in the war (which war?) so Grable marries Champion. Lemmon returns, and the guys battle over the hefty star while Marge look on is distress. In the original film, the ending is ambiguous with both guys still in Arthur's life. Here, she pairs off with Lemmon. Bleh.

    Gower Champion might have been a good dancer and director but he's a zero as a romantic lead. So is Lemmon. Marge Champion (a terrific beard) looks like Bea Benaderet in corsets. The MGM darlings (the Champions) were a total bust in films. Grable was long past her prime and even though she's only 39 here, looks OLD and FAT.
    8SimonJack

    A good comedy and superb film just for the Champion dance numbers

    It was only a matter of time before a movie musical would be made with an "Enoch Arden" plot. This 1955 Columbia musical was it. Although the film writing credits list a W. Somerset Maugham play, that play itself was a version of the 1864 poem, "Enoch Arden," by Alfred Lord Tennyson. If not an exact take-off, the play was surely inspired by Tennyson's poem, which Maugham would certain have read and known as a British citizen.

    The only similarity with Maugham's "Home and Beauty" (written in 1915 and staged in 1919), is that the male character had been reported missing in action (MIA) in the Korean War (then called a conflict). And, there is a short sequence when the two males connive and turn their backs on the woman. Otherwise, "Three for the Show" clearly is a modern comedy musical rendition of the "Enoch Arden" story. And it is most obviously inspired by the 1940 comedy-romance movies that were made, more than anything else.

    So, anyway, this is a very good film. Although the story seems a little hokier in this modern setting of the Broadway stage. The two male friends were a writing team that had written a number of successful plays. But, when Marty Stewart is listed as missing by the War Department during the Korean War, wife Gwen Howard after a couple years marries Vernon Lowndes who had been Hudson's partner. Jack Lemmon as Stewart and Betty Grable as Julie Lowndes, provide much of the comedy.

    But this film has a tremendous value beyond the comedy and the plot. That is its musical parts, especially the dance numbers and routines. Marge and Gower Champion had danced in several films that showed their talents in one or two numbers. But those supporting roles could hardly begin to show the range and beauty of their dancing. This film does that. It's their best and a wonderfully entertaining musical that showcases great dancing. I think that this single film of the Champions rates with the many outstanding dance musicals of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. For that reason alone, this is a real keeper.

    On a production note, "Three for the Show" was made by Columbia Pictures. Musicals were still somewhat popular in 1955, though beginning to fade in numbers. Since its founding in 1918, Columbia had reached the second tier of movie studies, right under the big five during Hollywood's golden era (MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, RKO and United Artists). But by the 1950s, Columbia had moved up and was then one of the Big Six, along with Universal - with those two studios replacing UA. By the end of the 20th century, with the demise of MGM and RKO, Disney had grown to be the largest movie company, with Columbia and Universal close behind. Warner Brothers and Fox rounded out the Big Five into the early 21st century.

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    Related interests

    Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
    Musical

    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Mercury Records issued a 10-inch LP of the soundtrack, which would be the only contemporary soundtrack album released from a Betty Grable film.
    • Goofs
      Martin 'Marty' Stewart appears in a U. S. Air Force uniform, yet several times in the movie various characters refer to him being in the U. S. Army.
    • Quotes

      Gwen Howard: I wonder what kind of champagne I should order.

      Vernon Lowndes: Depends what you're launching.

    • Connections
      Featured in Hollywood: The Gift of Laughter (1982)
    • Soundtracks
      How Come you Do Me Like You Do
      Words and Music by Gene Austin and Ray Bergere

      Performed by Betty Grable (uncredited)

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • February 24, 1955 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • The Pleasure Is All Mine
    • Production company
      • Columbia Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      • 1h 33m(93 min)
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2:55 : 1

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