Saturdays with the Stars: Betty Grable

Each month of 2020 we will be looking at the movies of some of Hollywood's most famous sex symbols, women whose intense beauty frequently overshadowed their filmic careers.  Last month, we kicked off our series with a look at Jean Harlow, perhaps the prototypical sex symbol for modern cinema.  This month we move on to a woman whose name is synonymous with her appearance, whose filmic career (which was sizable) is dwarfed by her status as a pin-up girl during World War II and the legs that, to quote the lady herself, were the "two reasons she became a star."  This month, our star is Betty Grable.

Born Elizabeth Ruth Grable, the young Betty traveled with her stage mother mom Lillian to Hollywood at the age of 12 to try and make a living in the wake of the recession.  Lillian lied about her daughter's age to get her parts, but it worked-she received chorus work at Fox before being discovered by Samuel Goldwyn, who made Grable (along with fellow future stars like Lucille Ball, Paulette Goddard, & Ann Sothern) one of his "Goldwyn Girls," giving her a significant part in the opening number of Whoopee!.  However, Goldwyn didn't have enough work for her, and let her go, and she had uninspired stints at RKO and Paramount before the decade ended, when she was brought onto Fox, and lucked into the lead role in Down Argentine Way after Alice Faye had to drop out.  The film was a massive hit and changed Grable's life, turning her from a bit player in B-Movies into a Grade-A film star almost overnight.

Throughout the 1940's, Grable would be a huge star.  In terms of box office, she was probably the biggest actress of the decade, even if her peers like Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck have more memorable roles.  She consistently minted money for Fox doing musical comedies, and was declared the highest-paid woman in the country in 1946 & 1947 by the Treasury Department.  However, it was Grable's position as a pinup star during World War II that people actually remember about her career during this era.  Photographed by Frank Powolny, it shows Grable in a white one-piece bathing suit with her back to the camera to show off her famous legs, a smile over her right shoulder.  This photograph, more than any actual movie, is what people remember Grable for, making her about as good a candidate for a series about "actresses whose appearance superseded their careers" as you could possibly come up with.

Grable's career as a leading woman petered out in the early 1950's when she was replaced as the #1 blonde on the Fox lot by Marilyn Monroe, a woman whom she got along with famously during their only film together How to Marry a Millionaire.  Grable's career turned to Vegas until her death in 1973, but this month we're going to be going back to Grable's heyday, looking at the films that launched her into becoming the highest-paid and one of the most recognizable women in the country during World War II.