OVP: Mother Wore Tights (1947)

Film: Mother Wore Tights (1947)
Stars: Betty Grable, Dan Dailey, Mona Freeman, Connie Marshall
Director: Walter Lang
Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Scoring*, Best Original Song-"You Do", Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Betty Grable-click here to learn more about Ms. Grable (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1947 Betty Grable had reached the peak of her fame, and was basically printing money for Fox every time she got in front of the camera.  Even on a film where Grable was pregnant with her daughter Jessica, that wasn't enough for the studio system to wear her down, and with Mother Wore Tights we get her first of four pairings with actor Dan Dailey.  This was because in 1947 Mother Wore Tights was a huge success-it was the top grossing Fox release of the year, and at the time Grable's biggest hit.  We will be doing two films in a row of Grable's pairings with Dailey (though, thanks to When My Baby Smiles at Me not being available pretty much anywhere for viewing, not the two I had initially intended), to see why the two were such a well-liked cinematic match.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Myrtle McKinley (Grable), a young woman who is destined for business college, but instead ends up being hired as a chorus girl in a vaudeville troupe, where she meets Frank (Dailey), a bit of a scalawag who does the same tired comedy routine each night to less-and-less effect.  After some initial misunderstandings, Myrtle & Frank join together to create a successful duo, though it's clear that she's carrying him more than the other way around.  Weirdly, though, that's not the focus-it's instead on how their successful career keeps getting in the way of their quiet home life, where their two daughters Iris (Freeman) and Miriam (Marshall) must cope with having their parents away so often, and eventually, how their parents' "crude" acts & occupations interfere with Iris's pursuit of a posh businessman's son.

As we're three movies into this month, I'm going to confess something-I'm not loving Betty Grable so far.  I get the sunshine appeal, but while I loved that with Alice Faye (who always made sure her characters were smarter than the trope), Grable plays her characters for laughs and for ease.  As a result her daffy blonde doesn't become savvier than her male costars eventually, but just stays obedient and subservient to them.  In many ways Grable is the antithesis of another actress who dominated the 1940's, Bette Davis, who wouldn't be caught dead taking second fiddle to any man...and I love Bette Davis.  I'm hopeful that Grable will be able to win me over sometime in her last two pictures, but her roles have a level of domesticity that borders on the boring.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Mother Wore Tights, a title that is telling because it's subtly shading Grable for being both a matron and for being sexy (that's a joke that's told a couple of times in the picture).  Never mind that she's more talented than her costar Dailey, who is dull in this part (making me wish I could see When My Baby Smiles even more as Dailey infamously got the Oscar nomination most people thought would go to Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and after seeing Dailey act in a similar picture, I'm flummoxed as to how Bogart's landmark turn could have been ignored in such a way).  The script, though, is so conservative and ridiculously quaint that the film ages instantly, probably not even being at home in the 1950's, much less the 2010's.  The idea of classism and feminism's answers being acquiescing to the rich males is absurd and wrongheaded.

The film won three Oscar nominations, including a victory for Best Scoring, but I wasn't onboard with any of these.  The cinematography is fine, if never noteworthy (I feel like they were commending the movie for its use of color for the sets & costumes than any trick of the lighting), while the musical numbers are forgettable.  The main track of "You Do" is sung twice in the picture (by Dailey and then at the end by Freeman), but it's so inconsequential to the earlier plot you don't get why it's being retread other than to help its Oscar chances.  The entire score is forgettable, quite frankly, and while I get how it won (considering the box office & the thin slate of musicals from 1947 it would have been my prediction in that lineup), I'm hopeful there's at least one hidden treasure in a slate of films where I haven't seen any of them.  Because Mother Wore Tights is certainly no treasure.