Three for the Show

Betty Grable was 39 when she made this film, her last to be released, and her constant references to herself as a girl seem peculiar. Even more disturbing is the way she imitates the singing style of Marilyn Monroe in her numbers. She had just made "How To Marry a Millionaire" with Monroe and had commented that she felt she was handing her crown on to Monroe. But to see the great star Grable trying to be Monroe is a little sad.

The film itself is a mess of a thing - some good dance numbers featuring Marge and Gower Champion (Marge's fantasy sequence is very fine) and some good songs ("I've Got a Crush On You", "Someone to Watch Over Me")sit uncomfortably with the plot and the director never seems sure which style he is aiming for. It looks like an attempt to cover the breezy free style of the Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen musicals, with characters bursting into song all over the place and elaborate dance dream sequences. But the result is a confusion of styles and a plodding pace.

The plot concerns married Grable discovering her presumed dead first husband is still alive. She must then choose between new husband Gower Champion and old husband Jack Lemmon (who also happen to be a show writing team). This potentially serious situation, that probably occurred a lot after the war, is treated completely flippantly - and with Gower's real life wife hanging around it's not hard to guess how things will turn out. Lemmon is good, but looks uncomfortable singing and dancing. See this for the numbers - but make sure you see it in Cinemascope.

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.

Betty grable was 39 when she made Three For The Show, She looked fabulous, sung wonderful songs and outdanced the reigning blonde Marilyn Monroe who Grable handed the Fox Blonde crown to in 1953, this movie made in 1955 shows what a glamorous movie queen Grable could have continued to be. this movie was made at Columbia and Grable should have put down roots there, she was offered Pal Joey but turned it down, silly Grable . anyway as movie historys most successful moneymaker Grable reigns supreme. she outperformed Marge Champion and her then husband Gower, who 10 years later ignored Grable when she headlined in Broadways Hello Dolly his show, he sent his assistant to oversee Grables rendition of Dolly Levi. shame Gower! Grable the No.1 Star! No Columbia did not cheaply hire Grable, they paid her $200,000 for this movie, marilyn was still getting her $125,000 per film at fox.Other comments about being old and fat are vicious, Betty was stunning in this movie check youtube and see the clips from "Three for the Show".

..and with Marge and Gower Champion and Jack Lemmon...it is lots of fun. Fun is what Betty Grable was about...and this film is at its best during those sequences aimed at amusing. ...These days people do not understand Betty Grable very well. In her day she was everyman's and every womans ideal. Indeed no woman has broken Betty's box office record (eleven years in the top ten). And, in the forties and early fifties, women still dominated the box office to an amazing degree--Mom chose the films the family was going out to see. Though it was a bit early to be obvious, Betty in many ways represented a manifestation of what we would now call a liberated woman. She was nearly always working (in revealing clothing!), and she was self supporting. In real life she was a very successful working mother--and particularly during WWII she was an inspiration to women manning the homefront as much as an inspiration to the armed forces fighting overseas. She was pretty, talented, popular, and the highest salaried woman in the United States. Now she is remembered primarily as a 'pin up'--which she also was, but the title tends to diminish the many other factors that created her popularity. One thing is certain, in "Three for the Show" or any other of her starring films--she will entertain you royally within the limitations of the material she was given.

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 ****