GEORGE MARSHALL
Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB. USA, 1947. Paramount Pictures. Story by P.J. Wolfson, Screenplay by P.J. Wolfson, Frank Butler. Cinematography by Ray Rennahan. Produced by Sol C. Siegel. Music by Robert Emmett Dolan. Production Design by Roland Anderson, Hans Dreier. Costume Design by Waldo Angelo, Edith Head. Film Editing by Arthur P. Schmidt. Academy Awards 1947.
Pearl White was a silent screen movie star who appeared in the cliffhanger film series “The Perils of Pauline”. This delightful comedy, made in 1947, stars a wonderfully energetic Betty Hutton as White, a woman who moved up from textile sweat shops to a career on stage and eventually into her highly charged and extremely popular action films. Most of the screenplay is pure fiction, particularly when it involves her romance with a stage star-turned bit player (John Lund), but you don’t have to know the real story to find that blatantly obvious (how is it possible that White and Lund’s romance is as clichéd as any other in movies at the time?). With a few wonderful Frank Loesser songs thrown in, the film also purports to be a musical, though the songs are so few and far between that it hardly qualifies. However, the lovely ballad “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” is a standout.
