Thursday, January 10, 2002

THESE GLAMOUR GIRLS (1939)

An MGM B-romantic comedy about love between the classes. Lana Turner is a dance-hall girl who falls for a rich college kid (Lew Ayres) who has drunkenly invited her to his college's big party weekend. Of course, the lower-class Turner ends up teaching Ayres a thing or two about life and they wind up (quite improbably) together at the end. The interesting supporting cast includes Ann Rutherford, the ever-boyishly handsome Richard Carlson (in one of his first movies), Marsha Hunt, and Jane Bryan. It's mostly light in tone, but takes a weirdly melodramatic turn towards the end, including the rather out-of-nowhere suicide of a minor character. As is often the case with B-movies, there is too much plot for the movie to deal with in its short running time and the ending is incredibly rushed, with all kinds of plotlines left hanging, including the one with the suicide, which I ended up caring about more than I cared about what happened to callow boy Lew Ayres.

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