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Dance, Girl, Dance"
*** 1\2 (out of ****)
Chorus girl movies. That's what I've always called them but that is not an identifiable genre. These were movies centered around working class female characters that were employed as chorus girls. They were attractive women with sharp tongues, a witty one-liner was their specialty. They flirted with starvation and not paying their rent, which led some of them on the prowl for a sugar daddy. Others were caught in a triangle between a wealthy man and a poor one. Which one would she choose? The movies were popular during the Great Depression and Warner Brothers released a good many of them under the Gold Digger series - made in 1929, 1933, and 1935 among others. The women had independence until they were hungry. Then it was every woman for herself!
"Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940) directed by Dorothy Arzner was a reaction to those movies and calls out what they merely implied. Here is a movie with feminist themes - denouncing the male gaze, highlighting the false work paths women must choose - but also a commentary on art and the distinction between high brow versus low brow, and the difference between art and entertainment.
The film follows two female dancers; Judy (Maureen O'Hara) and Bubbles (Lucille Ball). Judy is the "serious" dancer. She studies ballet. Bubbles has sex appeal and knows how to flaunt it. Men can possibly appreciate the technical skill involved in what Judy is doing but they want to watch Bubbles. These two characters will go on completely different career paths and their divide sets up the many conflicts in "Dance, Girl, Dance" - can you achieve success without losing respectability? Do men truly value art or a pair of pretty legs? By the end of "Dance, Girl, Dance" husband and wife screenwriters Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis will answer these questions in the most explosive way.
The plot gets a bit more complicated due to the appearance of two male characters. One man is a wealthy drunkard, Jimmy Harris (Louis Haywood). He carries a torch for his soon-to-be ex-wife, Elinor (Virginia Field) but is not above playing with the affections of Judy and Bubbles, depending upon his state of sobriety. The other man is Steve Adams (Ralph Bellamy), the manager of a ballet academy.
Just as the women in the film represent larger themes, so too do the men signify something more. One of the subjects of "Dance, Girl, Dance" is the male viewer and Jimmy and Steve are flip sides of the same coin. Unbeknownst to the women in the film, both Steve and Jimmy are wealthy. Steve may run a ballet academy and appears to be a proper gentleman but he is not above ogling at a pretty lady. He flirts with Judy the first time he sees her, not knowing she is a dancer. When he discovers that she is, he attends one of her performances with his dance instructor. The instructor compliments her footwork while Steve compliments her eyes. Judy is working at a Burlesque show, dancing ballet. The men aren't pleased by her fancy footwork and want to see something more risqué. But if Steve is such a gentleman, is attracted to Judy, and appreciates her dancing, why doesn't he defend her honor from the loud and overwhelming boos coming from the largely male audience?
That distinguishes Steve from Jimmy. Outwardly Jimmy is a vulgar drunk. Exactly the kind of man you'd think would yell insulting remarks at a pretty chorus girl dancing. And yet it is Jimmy that is always advocating for the value of these women. He is in the audience for one of the same performances Steve is but it is Jimmy who shouts at the other men to allow Judy to go on with her routine while Steve just sits by. Sure Steve doesn't make nasty remarks, which is worth something, but is he just as complicit by staying silent but noticing Judy's pretty eyes? The film however wants us to think of Steve as the "good guy" despite this.
Then there is the matter of how Judy and Bubbles respond to and treat men. Steve and Jimmy are attracted to Judy but Judy won't give Steve the time of day. On the surface, Steve is the nicer guy. Judy has never seen Steve drunk but always seems to meet Jimmy under those conditions. Jimmy blows hot and cold switching between Judy and Bubbles, and yet Judy is always willing to forgive him. Why is that? It's because Judy is attracted to Jimmy and not Steve. While "Dance, Girl, Dance" shows us a world where women are presented as viewing objects for the pleasure of men, sometimes, depending on the man, a woman likes to be looked at.
Arzner gets this concept across within the film's opening sequence. The film begins with the chorus girls singing and dancing to the Beer Barrel Polka but notice how Arzner and her cinematographer, Russell Metty, shoot the number. The women are wearing skirts that are above the knee with black stockings that meet them, so we really don't see any bare flesh. It has sex appeal but isn't vulgar. Importantly the camera doesn't linger on the girls or their legs. Arzner cuts away from the women to shots of the orchestra and then goes into an extreme long shot showing the women dancing but we see the back of the crowd's heads. The top of their heads serve as a dividing line so we only see the women from the waist up. The sequence isn't really about the dancing, since we don't see it, and its not really meant to emphasize sex appeal because the camera doesn't linger on the women, like a vulture going after it's prey. What happens however is as the women are dancing, they take off their top hats and point them towards the audiences. The top of their hats has a mirror which they use to put a spotlight on the men in the audience. Judy and Bubbles both notice Jimmy sitting down and give him a flirtatious smile. Bubbles takes it a step further and puts her mirror spotlight on him. Jimmy responds by blocking the mirror's reflection. That move bruises Bubble's ego, as we can see she feels rejected.
Lets compare this opening to
"The Gay Divorcee" (1934), the first RKO musical to give Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers starring roles together. Here is how I described the opening sequence in my review of that film, "The opening number in the movie is called "Don't Let It Bother You". It is sung by an all-female chorus at a French nightclub. The ladies are wearing very short dresses so the viewer can see their legs and garter belts as they stand on a revolving stage. There is a counter top where they can rest their hands, which are dressed as miniature dolls, with their fingers acting as the doll's legs. After the chorus sings the song the lights go dim and the camera closes in on the dolls as they appear to be dancing. However, you will notice the camera doesn't go in for a close-up. Instead it is a long shot. The viewer can still perfectly see the ladies' legs in frame with the dolls providing a not so subtle hint of sex appeal. Certainly you could have filmed this sequence with a close-up of only the dolls in frame without showing the chorus girls and their legs." Do you see the difference between "The Gay Divorcee" and what Arzner did?
That leads us to a famous speech at the end of "Dance, Girl, Dance". A character sternly tells the men in the audience how they, the female performers, are acutely aware of how men look at them while they dance. The character wants to men to know they aren't getting away with anything. But in this opening sequence we see how women can use the attention that is placed on them and flip it to their advantage, if they find a man that is attractive to them. The flirting can go both ways. It is a kind of dance if you will. This is why New Yorker critic Richard Brody wrote one of the film's themes is love versus lust. Although he didn't fully explain that thought, I interpret it as referring to the Judy / Jimmy / Steve triangle. Judy and Jimmy represent lust and Steve, the film wants us to believe, is love. He genuinely cares for Judy. That's why the final line of the film is given by a tearful woman, crying on a man's shoulder. She says it could have all been so easy. She complicated her life by following lust instead of love.
While the speech near the end, calling out the male gaze, is memorable and gets all of the attention, there is another sequence that I find more egregious in the sexism it presents. The women are sent by their agent (Maria Ouspenskaya) to audition a hula routine for a club owner. The agent is concerned because there's a chance Bubbles won't make the audition on time. Without Bubbles, the agent knows the male club owner won't be interested. None of the other women have that same "it" factor that Bubbles has. But the women go anyway, while the club owner stares on in a zombie like trance. Completely uninterested. When Bubbles shows up late, the owner becomes alive and animated. His tongue practically falls out of his mouth as he watches Bubbles do a solo.
This sequence stood out to me because I wondered if the agent was a stand in for Arzner. Arzner understood how the male dominated world of moviemaking worked. What the expectations were. How women were supposed to be filmed. Sex sells. The agent doesn't seem to relish what she is doing. She clearly understands the women aren't being admired for their dancing ability but what can she do? She can't fight the system and the women need a job in order to eat. It creates a vicious cycle of women compromising themselves all for the satisfaction of male viewers. Watching this sequence I was reminded of something I read Amy Holden Jones, the director of the 80's horror slasher film
"Slumber Party Massacre" (1982), said about the nude scenes in that movie. She knew she had to do it because that's what the client (the studio) wanted, so she figured she would just shoot them early to get them over with, and get on with the picture. It's sad to think this is what women have had to put up with for years to make it in the entertainment industry. To Jones' credit, she was able to create a social commentary even within those nude scenes.
Whereas the famous male gaze speech near the end, double-crosses itself. Critics, with the singular focus of only emphasizing the feminist themes in the film, neglect to describe what comes after the speech. After the speech is given, "Dance, Girl, Dance" goes for humor as two women begin fighting with each other on the stage. The woman making the speech wanted to end things on a high note, demonstrating her moral superiority over the audience. Then she gets knocked down, both literally and fugitively. On one hand that is the essence of comedy, you make a serious statement and then do the unexpected and go for the punchline. But as the marvelous Alicia Malone articulates in her wonderful book, The Female Gaze, "in the end, the women denigrate themselves for entertainment, just as the audience wanted."
However the brilliant critic Molly Haskell wrote in her most famous book From Reverence to Rape that the final exchange of the two women, now in court, after their fight is "most beautiful" because to Haskell it reveals that the women did not fight over a man but instead over art and convictions. To me, the real answer is a mixture of both, though I understand Haskell's observation. And Haskell even goes as far as to describe the film as Arzner's "most explicitly feminist film".
"Dance, Girl, Dance" may be Arzner's most accessible and popular film and ironically she wasn't intended to be the director of the film. Originally the film was to be directed by Roy Del Ruth, a filmmaker who got his start with Mack Sennett and directed some notable musicals and comedies - "Kid Millions" (1934) with Eddie Cantor, and "Du Barry Was A Lady" (1943), an adaption of a Cole Porter Broadway musical, that oddly removed nearly all of his songs but also featured Lucille Ball. Reports suggest Del Ruth struggled with "Dance, Girl, Dance" which was based on a story by Vicki Baum, of "Grand Hotel" (1932) fame. Del Ruth was fired by the producer and replaced by Arzner, who had no experience directing musicals. That didn't stop Arzner however from reshooting everything Del Ruth had done and making her own changes to the story.
One of the significant changes Arzner made was changing the gender of the agent character from male to female. This adds to the emotional complexity of the hula audition scene, and how sad it is to see a woman having to go against her instincts - morally and artistically - and have her girls "sell out". The change also creates a tender mentor / student dynamic, highlighting the importance of female influence on younger women.
Arzner is often credited as "the only woman director of the Golden Age". It sounds impressive (or maddening, depending on your perspective) but it's not exactly accurate. Wanda Tuchock, for example, wrote and directed "Finishing School" (1934). Grace Elliott directed documentaries and in the U.K. there was Elinor Glyn and Jacqueline Logan. A more accurate description would be, Arzner was the only American female director, making fictional feature films in Hollywood. Some of her notable films include "Merrily We Go To Hell" (1932), a pre-code gem starring Sylvia Sidney, that implies an open marriage. There was also "The Bride Wore Red" (1937) with Joan Crawford, "Craig's Wife" (1936) with Rosalind Russell as a domineering, ambitious woman, and finally her directorial debut film, "Fashions for Women" (1927). And in addition to all of this, Arzner is also credited with having invented the boom mike, on the set of her film "The Wild Party" (1929), starring "It" girl, Clara Bow.
I'd also like to take a moment and comment on Lucille Ball and her performance. Today Ball may be the best known member of the cast and why any modern viewers would choose to see this film. She had an energy that really carried the film. It is the kind of showy performance that captures your attention and steals the film, despite some good work by Maureen O' Hara. Ball wasn't exactly an unknown by the time she appeared in "Dance, Girl, Dance", as some have implied. She got her start as a chorus girl in M-G-M musicals, and credited Eddie Cantor for giving her a break in his delightful comedy, "Roman Scandals" (1933). By the time she appeared in this film she had small roles in a couple of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals (Ball and Rogers were friends), a Three Stooges comedy, a Marx Brothers comedy, and had some success in a series of "Annabel" comedies. Admittedly it was after this role, the better and more memorable ones followed. Here however Ball is playing a street smart, sassy girl, as she had played in her previous roles. I never quite felt that persona suited her. Eve Arden, yes! But Ball seemed too glamorous for these kind of roles.
"Dance, Girl, Dance" is one of Arzner's best films for the way it explores the female themes her work often did. This would prove to be her final film as director, although she is credited as the director of "First Comes Courage" (1943), it is known she was replaced by the Hungarian director Charles Vidor, after falling ill with pneumonia. Later in life she became a professor at UCLA, where one of her students was Francis Ford Coppola.
