OVP: Golden Girl (1951)

Film: Golden Girl (1951)
Stars: Mitzi Gaynor, Dale Robertson, Dennis Day, Una Merkel, James Barton
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Never")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Mitzi Gaynor is one of those stars of yesteryear that could have lit up any marquee in America in the 1950's, and yet very few people today could pick her out amidst the Bacalls, Hepburns, and Marilyns of the era.  It's a pity too because Gaynor, one of the biggest actors in 20th Century Fox's cavalcade, is one of the last living silver screen headliners of the 1950's.  Gaynor's biggest claim to fame would come some seven years later, when she would be the lead in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific.  Golden Girl was a tremendously important film in her career, however, as it was the first one where she was the main attraction, grabbing top billing, and thankfully it became a big hit and she would go on to be a major star of motion pictures for years to come.  Her work here was as a much older (chronologically) actress and singer, Lotta Crabtree, once nicknamed "the Nation's Darling" and one of the biggest actresses of the Civil War era.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes a severe amount of liberties with Crabtree's life, in a similar fashion to Calamity Jane two years later with Doris Day (one of Gaynor's cinematic "rivals" at the time).  The movie focuses on the plucky Lotta as she begins her career as an actress and show-woman.  She remains obsessed with Lola Montez, the leading actress of her day (and one of those fabulously scandalous actresses that they should make a film about immediately-the daughter of a member of Parliament, she ended up having affairs with Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas pere, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria, afterwards she went on to be a wildly successful actress in America and Australia before being a women's history advocate-who wouldn't watch that?!?), and is intent on becoming just like her.  We soon learn that she can sing wonderfully (she is, after all, Mitzi Gaynor) and that she has the pluck to be a successful star.

It's kind of heartwarming to see a Classical Hollywood take on the "rising singer" story, since it's become so riddled with cliche in recent years (drugs, loss, redemption, and "always about the music" could be used to describe every musical biopic of the past fifteen years).  We don't actually see a lot of struggle in Lotta's corner-she's a star from the get-go (which actually mirrors real life, when she became a headliner as early as six-years-old).  This refreshing bit, though, making it largely about the music, means that we get a Classical Hollywood cliche: the stifled and stuffed romantic subplot.  The film would be perfectly fine to have Lotta simply struggle to be her own self and reach success, but since it's filmed in the 1950's and heaven forbid a woman want something other than a strong, handsome man, we get a ridiculous subplot with Dale Robertson playing a mysterious paramour from Alabama who is secretly a bandit helping the Confederate Army.  The fact that the movie ends with that (we think he's dead, and then he comes back to life even though in real life Lotta never actually married) seems silly-this was always about her struggles to find stardom and her wonderfully odd relationship with her parents (James Barton and Una Merkel, both doing their character actor best to be a drunken gambler and a grumpy stick-in-the-mud with a heart of gold).  We also get a deeply uncomfortable penultimate scene where Lotta sings "Dixie" after the Civil War ends, trying to heal the wounds of the nation, though in the film it doesn't have that context and it makes her seem like a southern sympathizer with no interest at all in helping the North.  We didn't need that for the ending to what was generally a likable movie.

The reason I caught the film, other than for the sheer joy of supporting Turner Classic Movies (Mitzi Gaynor did the intro with Robert Osborne, always a treat getting tidbits about the film straight from the star), was that it is part of the OVP, and received one nomination for Best Original Song.  The song "Never" isn't actually sung by Gaynor, but instead by her costar Dennis Day, who was most noted for his years as one of Jack Benny's sidekicks; you can hear the song here.  The music and song is beautiful-classic and lovely, seemingly plucked out of a Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy film (if Eddy could have sung just a bit higher), but it has absolutely nothing to do with the principle plot-the subplot involving Day's unrequited love for Lotta goes absolutely nowhere (even though he has a more interesting chemistry with her, considering she's the one in charge of that relationship), and it just becomes an odd stand-alone ballad in a film swimming with fun, danceable ditties.  It's always hard to judge these sorts of songs in terms of Oscar, because the music itself is wonderful, but it doesn't fit (Royal Wedding, another nominated film that same year, had a similar problem).  We're years away from tackling this OVP year, but I can tell you that it's already a close race between the two.

Those are my thoughts on this musical-what are yours?  If you haven't seen the film (and I'm guessing many of you haven't), what are your thoughts on Mitzi Gaynor, and do you have a favorite performance?  Would you see a Lola Montez biopic (and who should play her)?  And how do you judge the Best Original Song category-is it all about the music, or are context/theme just as important?  Share in the comments!