OVP: Cover Girl (1944)

Film: Cover Girl (1944)
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman, Phil Silvers, Leslie Brooks, Eve Arden, Otto Kruger
Director: Charles Vidor
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Best Scoring*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound, Original Song-"Long Ago and Far Away")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Rita Hayworth-click here to learn more about Ms. Hayworth (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

When discussing the films of Rita Hayworth in the early 1940's, every single one of them seems to be followed by "Film X made Hayworth a star!" and in some ways they are all right, and in other ways they're wrong.  Hayworth by 1944 was pretty much a household name, and was someone who could clearly open movies (and get top billing, as she did with this picture).  Her work with Fred Astaire had guaranteed her opportunity, but she wasn't really in the stratosphere in the way she would be soon, and that stratosphere came with Cover Girl.  Teamed with Gene Kelly (in may ways this is also the "film that made Kelly a star!") this musical was a massive hit for Columbia, enough so that, from here on out, no one was calling Hayworth's work "the film that made her a star," but simply "she was a huge star, period."  What was it about Cover Girl that so sparked the imagination?  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Rusty (Hayworth) a chorus girl in her boyfriend Danny's (Kelly) nightclub who by a freak chance-of-fate gets hired to be the cover girl for Vanity magazine (it feels very akin in the film to Vanity Fair).  She gets the job in part because the magazine's publisher John Coudair (Kruger) thinks she bares a striking resemblance to her grandmother, whom he loved in her youth (and indeed, Hayworth does play this role in flashbacks).  The film alternates between both women's fates, and both end up meeting the same end.  Both are given a chance at fame-and-fortune, potentially marrying a wealthy man who adores them, but instead stick with the simple life with the men who first pursued them there.

The plot here isn't breaking new ground, but the music is divine.  The film is early in Kelly's career, and is marked as the first of his films to have some of his choreography & direction (which to that point with MGM he hadn't been able to impose onto his films).  As a result, we get some of the astonishing precision of Kelly's best musicals coming out in full-force here, from the joy of "Make Way for Tomorrow" to the hilariously cheeky "Poor John" to the soaring "Long Ago (and Far Away)."  It's hard not to see a lot of Singin' in the Rain in some of the choreography, particularly comparing "Good Mornin'" to "Make Way for Tomorrow" and "Cover Girl" to "Beautiful Girl" from the movie, and I'm surprised that Google didn't show more similarities between the two when I did a search.  Perhaps Cover Girl isn't as discussed today to make that connection?

Either way, this is a gem.  Eve Arden practically steals the whole movie as a wisecracking assistant to Kruger's boss, and Hayworth has never looked so glamorous.  The film's plot doesn't always make sense, but the production design is so splendid you won't care.  The film won five Oscar nominations, and deserved them all.  The score is light and winning, the sound work excellent (particularly considering how well they do to make Hayworth's lip-syncing feel natural), and the lighting is delicious, the shadow work in "Long Ago" being a particular highlight.  Hayworth would weirdly find herself steering further away from musicals shortly after this, moving into drama and noir (our final two pictures from her this month will focus on this period of her career), but for those who only think of Hayworth from Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai, it's kind of bliss to watch her be so genuinely happy in a picture like Cover Girl.