Marie Antoinette (1938)

Norma Shearer plays the semi-historical shallow party girl who comes to a bad end. If you must lose your head you might as well do it in gowns by Adrian. MGM doubled the size of Versailles with a budget of 1.8 million dollars, stopping just short of filming the whole thing in Technicolor — reportedly Shearer’s sumptuous fur coat was dyed blue to match her eyes.

Three for the Show (1955)

Broadway star Betty Grable discovers she is married to two men and is thrilled, but best friend Marge Champion figures she’ll be the odd one out if she can’t stop that ego-maniacal bitch.

Sensations of 1945 (1944)

Eleanore Powell is a Broadway star who creates a sensation with a series of dangerous publicity stunts. Whether faking her own murder attempt, or putting a circus tent atop a skyscraper, or stopping traffic in Times Square, her irresponsible media-lust is putting people in danger and landing her in jail. It’s up to sweet lug Dennis O’Keefe to show her that free publicity doesn’t have to mean someone gets hurt!

Since there’s not much focus on plot stringing together stunts and show numbers, Sensations takes on a Follies-quality even inviting Ziegfeld alum Sophie Tucker and WC Fields to churn the embers of vaudeville one last time. Tucker does it with grace; Fields falls flat on his face. Cab Calloway, Woody Herman, and Les Paul each deliver flashy music videos conducting their big bands, and plenty of lovely athletic showgirls, and a dozen specialty acts and trick photography bring back the silver age of MGM’s more imaginative musicals of the 1930s.

Powell seems a frenzy of re-invention almost a decade after her Broadway Melody debut she opens with a hectic jitterbug number that moves so fast she can barely be recognized. This is the notorious film where she tap dances in a giant pinball machine — as the pinball! And her dance partner in the finale is a horse, no really, a dancing horse. I can’t make this stuff up. Sensations would turn out to be Powell’s last starring role, but certainly not from a lack of ideas.

Rosalie (1937)

Fans of Eleanor Powell will wonder how she detoured into this Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy overblown costume piece — and in the role of Jeanette MacDonald no less! Whereas delicate Jeanette would have floated through this pageant with an air of fluttering dignity, pants-wearing Ellie delivers too much punch for a princess. She barks most of her lines and unfortunately comes off as a bitch. A more delicate actress would have softened the barrage of “womanly” insults laid on Nelson Eddy and we would know this meant she was smitten. But with the confidant and athletic Powell delivering the insults you really start to wonder if wooden Eddy is a masochist or just extremely submissive. It’s an electric energy that cost Powell her spotlight, and didn’t fit with MGM’s idea of what a feminine leading lady should be.

Those who are fascinated by Ellie’s unusual (at least on film) gender-play will be thrilled to see her “go all the way” and dress as a man to sneak into a military academy where she leads the cadets in a marching drill in front of a phallic war memorial. While Powell is hardly mannish (and here with Jeanette’s wardrobe and make-up budget she never looked prettier) the production plays with her “masculinity” and dresses her in all extremes of buttoned-downed marching band jackets and crisp uniforms, interspersed with overly feminine gowns with frou-frou puffy sleeves and Jeanette’s corkscrew curls. It’s an inconsistent and mostly unsuccessful gender dichotomy — especially when compared to her smart wardrobe play and winning charisma in the Broadway Melody films.

Her tap numbers are too few and too short — a Pieroette “ballet” on giant drums is an weird jumble of inconsistent imagery, and a brief scene with Ray Bolger makes you wish they’d shared a competitive dance of lightning legwork rather than the time-wasting dialog in the script. Other supporting players are also underused: as the Queen, Edna May Oliver appears briefly in a tiered nightgown that exaggerates her Olive Oil frame, and Frank Morgan does his best to keep the banter rolling as a befuddled monarch with a ventriloquist dummy, but there isn’t enough comedy here to entertain. A sudden accidental revolution in the tiny Balkan monarchy has potential, but is dropped just as quickly. Even the production numbers are too short, following the pattern of the other MacDonald/Eddy films where actual choreography and musical style are ignored for lots and lots of extras (1500 in one scene by some accounts) arranged in expensive costumes and plenty of operetta bombast from Eddy.

Some moments shine, including a stunning solo by Ilona Massey as a nouveau Queen of the Night: she descends a marble staircase followed by an admiring fawn. Nine original songs by Cole Porter include “I’ve a Strange New Rhythm in My Heart”, “Spring Love is in the Air”, “In the Still of the Night”, and “To Love or Not To Love”. An abrupt wedding finale is a lovely tiered cake of gowned women, candelabras, and cellophane drapes, but leaves you wondering what the hell happened.

Other than seeing Eleanor Powell in one of her few starring roles this is a forgettable film that shows no one to advantage, except possibly MGM’s costume department. I can see how this was originally a vehicle for Marion Davies because the sets are jaw-droppingly huge.

That Touch of Mink (1962)

Doris Day at the height of her come-back popularity as the prim but lovable “girl” who won’t put out without a ring on her finger, meets her match in playboy executive Cary Grant who is willing to fly her around the world but doesn’t want to settle down and get married. What’s a good girl to do?

He’s charming, wonderful, and wealthy. He showers her with gifts and shopping trips to Bergdorf’s, but a girl who strays with her reputation always pays. Can an old fashioned girl be bought for a trip to Bermuda and a mink coat? Mmmmmaybe…

It’s actually never implied that Day is inexperienced with men. The joke of her being the world’s oldest virgin is a sexist slur, a label Day hated because it flippantly denied any positive aspect to her wholesome sex comedies. The real trophy at stake isn’t her virtue but her value. Easily won is easily discarded — it takes a woman of experience to know how men think, and to hold out for what she wants.

Far from being a prudish throwback in an age of carefree swingers, Day forges her own brand of lipstick feminism: the right to wear skirts and high heels and still insist that men respect you in the morning, no matter what your age or experience.
…more about That Touch of Mink