These Glamour Girls

What a hidden little gem. Drunken rich college boy (Lew Ayres) invites working class girl (Lana Turner) to a big college dance. Once she arrives there, however, he has sobered up and forgotten all about her. Despite this and despite being treated badly by the snobby girls, Lana stays and shows them all up.

A delightful movie with a great cast full of beautiful young starlets. Lana Turner is gorgeous and her curvy figure is certainly different than most of the other girls. Her personality shines in this movie as well. She's really likable. Lovely Jane Bryan plays one of the nicer rich girls. Jane has a crush on a working class boy herself. Anita Louise is the viper of the bunch; the head mean girl. Ann Rutherford, adorable as ever, is the slow but cute one. Marsha Hunt plays a girl who is a little older than the others and is trying too hard to fit in. She's quite good to watch. Lew Ayres is charming, even when he's being a jerk. Richard Carlson plays the object of Jane Bryan's affections. Mostly lightweight but some darker parts as well. On the whole, lots of fun.

A little background on the origins of this film--- The film is entertaining and well acted if over the top in spots. Frank Nugent, veteran film critic at The New York Times, called it "the best social comedy of the year."(8/31/1939). Nugent also admires the actors "because they all admirably served the very high and rare cinematic purposes of social satire, deliberately rigged from the underprivileged viewpoint, and – even in its affected callowness-- more brutally acidulous than Claire Luce ever dreamed of being." The person most responsible for the story and dialogue was Jane Hall who wrote a 150 page film treatment for "These Glamour Girls," with Marion Parsonnet in the late summer of 1938. They also wrote the screenplay. Cosmopolitan (Yes! It used to be a literary magazine) then commissioned Hall to turn her treatment into a book-length novel for its December 1938 issue.

Hall's stories about the romantic predicaments of the smart young set appealed to harassed young housewives and working women; several were published in national magazines between 1936 and 1942. Her snappy dialogue caught the notice of MGM and in October 1937 she was offered a contract as a scenarist; she remained in Hollywood for much of the next three years. (For a time Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the office next to her.)

Hall and her beloved fox terrier Kate (rescued during the 1938 floods in Los Angeles) were the October 1939 Cosmopolitan cover girls. Illustrator Bradshaw Crandell whose iconic cover girls were usually anonymous put "Jane Hall MGM" on the dog tag.

This film (and her stories) reflect the values in Hall's background. Her candid and refreshing take on society life in New York City and on eastern campuses stems from her childhood in a tiny desert town in Arizona (Salome) and in Manhattan Beach, CA. At 15, following the death of her widowed mother, she came to live with her aunt and uncle in Manhattan. Over the next five years, despite their huge losses during the Depression, her guardians saw to it that she met glamour girls and boys very much like the young college men and women in the film. Kingsford College is a take-off on Princeton University where she attended house parties. A keen observer, Hall drew on her experiences as a New York debutante in her writing. Could that be why the young heroine in the film is called Jane?

A year after appearing together in "Love Finds Andy Hardy", Lana Turner and Ann Rutherford were paired up in two 1939 films: "These Glamour Girls" and "Dancing Co-Ed". Beyond having a college setting (with Turner playing an outsider), there was little similarity between the two films. Although much more ambitious, "Those Glamour Girls" is not in the same class as the more entertaining and lyrical "Dancing Co-Ed".

It is the standard depression era story contrasting the shallowness of the upper class and their moral depravity with the virtuous working class. Direction-less rich boy Philip S. 'Phil' Griswold III (Lew Ayres) invites dance club hostess Jane Thomas (Turner) to spend the weekend at his elite college where the various clubs are hosting a big dance.

Jane receives a mixed welcome from his crowd, the rich boys view her as an exotic novelty and the snooty girls as an inferior. As always happens in this standard story the rich people learn a lot of life lessons from the poor girl and are transformed into better, more responsible and mature citizens.

Turner is horribly miscast as the tough girl with a heart of gold. She has little chemistry with Ayres and looks grumpy and distressed most of the time. Her biggest assets were her smile and comic timing, making her much better physically as the wholesome girl-next-door than in this type of "too serious" role. Except for one very nice dance number at the midway point of the film there is nothing to even suggest that she would become a star.

This early twenties coming-of-age story tries to tackle more issues than it can reasonably handle, too many issues mean at best a superficial treatment for each. The results are disappointing as little of the interplay and character growth is convincing.

One exception is an excellent performance by Marsha Hunt as Betty Ainsbridge, a slightly older girl who has been left behind by her contemporaries and is trying to fit in with the younger crowd. Hunt (also a "Andy Hardy" veteran) does a great job of conveying the insecurities and desperation of a woman of that era confronting a future that holds fewer and fewer options for her. Unfortunately, her story is almost incidental to the main action of the film.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

At this stage of his career Lew Ayres seemed to be playing drunken playboys when he wasn't being Dr. Kildare. At the same time that These Glamour Girls came out Ayres went on some glorious binges in Remember and Holiday.

In this film Ayres a bit old for a college kid plays one of the upper crust who is going to prestigious Kingsford College. One night he and his pals go slumming to a dime a dance hall and Ayres issues an inebriated invitation to one of the girls to go to an upper crust clambake he's throwing.

Of course he forgets about it, but Lana Turner from Brooklyn goes and wows the crowd with some of her moves. Some of the debutantes resent her like Anita Louise, but she sure has the guys with their tongues hanging out.

One of those films designed to exhibit Lana Turner in her upcoming years from the MGM B picture unit. And certainly Lana struts her stuff.

When talking about These Glamour Girls one cannot overlook Marsha Hunt who at 23 and she's passed college age and never quite landed the husband she wanted. It was the culture of the times but a lot of women went to college not for education or career training but to land a husband. Hunt is no doubt without any skill to make a living and really is of a mindset that it's all over for her. Sad for anyone at 23 to think that no matter what the reason. Think of what happens to Andrea Leeds in Stage Door, Hunt meets a similar fate.

But this was Turner's moment and she's got beauty, talent, and wit aplenty. These Glamour Girls is old fashioned, but Lana Turner is eternal.

As a work of art, there is not much here - a poor cousin to "My Man Godfrey." As a "teaching moment," however, this film is a zinger. It tries to entertain but also to deliver a social message. It does so, so maladroitly that it ends up a perfect mirror of a mixed-up society, an almost-post-Depression society that was itself badly muddled and conflicted.

We are presented with a thoroughly obnoxious set of idle, moneyed, entitled, frivolous and uncaring young people. So much for a caricature of the upper classes. Ah, but then there is the heartwarming contrast with the poor but honest working-class heroine (Lana Turner - not a bad performance, but not quite convincing). So much for the clichéd social conflict. What lesson are we, the almost-post-Depression theater audience, intended to draw from this? Of course, the lesson is that we are all one. Even the obnoxious rich are not so bad. They will see the light. The rich boy and poor girl will marry. But do they? Not really. The rich kid loses his fortune. Not until then does he accept his love for the dime-a-dance girl. The once-rich-but-now-in-reduced-circumstances girl marries the poor student who must work his way through college. No one steps out of his or her economic sphere. The rest of the rich kids go off to continue their obnoxious, parasitic life-style. All is right with the world. No one is really bad. Smile. It is indeed extraordinary that the uber-rich kid's father is found to be a criminal. He has defrauded perhaps thousands of investors (probably including many poor investors) in his hedge-fund or Ponzi scheme; he's a veritable Bernie Madoff. Yet we are not expected to blame him or even to dislike him. "Thanks, dad, for having given me a good start in life," says his non-reproachful son. Capitalism is a tough business, not for the faint-hearted. It's all OK. The poor are virtuous. The rich are irritating but ultimately sympathetic. That is the lesson of "Glamour Girls." It's a message Hollywood was eager to deliver in 1939, and America was happy to receive. Maybe Hollywood was right. As the 19th century humorist Josh Billings, a friend of Mark Twain, put it, defining the American spirit: "Wealth won't make a man virtuous, but there ain't anybody who wants to be poor just for the purpose of being good."

As a social document, a relic of its time, the movie is revealing. As a film, a work of art, it is less than captivating - with one exception. That exception makes the whole thing worth seeing: the performance of Marsha Hunt. Her character, Martha, is the only one with depth. Her acting is the only one with profundity. Just watch her suicide scene. Watch her face as she drives toward her fatal moment. She registers nearly a dozen shifting emotions, all razor sharp and all without speaking a word, all in the space of a minute of screen time. First we see desperation as she speeds the car unheeding toward nowhere; then sadness; then surprise as she spots the train alongside; then a look of realization as the idea of what she can do strikes her; then happiness as it sinks in; then literal glee as she contemplates it; then fierce determination as she hits the accelerator; fear takes over as she reaches the crossing, fear as she nervously, fumblingly, lights a last cigarette; then glee again, a look of triumph as she stares at the sleeping drunken frat boy beside her - he will go down too. It is extraordinary acting. Marsha Hunt - I've seen her interviewed - said she didn't care to be a star. She wanted to be a character actress. She became one of the best. One year later she played the gawky, tone-deaf sister in "Pride and Prejudice." After that she played the heroic but devastated victim of Nazi oppression in "None Shall Return." She portrayed a nasty, conniving home-wrecker in "Smash-Up," then a gentle, conflicted lover in "Raw Deal." If nothing else, "Glamour Girls" gives us one sublime actress at her peak.