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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Aug 21, 2023 0:57:07 GMT
At another forum we are discussing the MGM film Pride and Prejudice made the year after These Glamour Girls. I have always felt Greer Garson was miscast as Eilzabeth Bennet, since the character was 20 years old midway in the novel. (Garson was 36). I was asked what actress I could see cast for the role and Anita Louise came to mind based on this thread. Louise was in a few costume\period films for Warner Bros and was 25. That would have been another film with both Marsha Hunt and Louise. A suggestion for Lana Turner for the role was also given, but Turner wasn't a very good actress at this stage of her career. Louise was a lot more experienced.
Hey, I get why MGM cast Garson since she was becoming their #1 female talent.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Aug 21, 2023 9:40:51 GMT
At another forum we are discussing the MGM film Pride and Prejudice made the year after These Glamour Girls. I have always felt Greer Garson was miscast as Eilzabeth Bennet, since the character was 20 years old midway in the novel. (Garson was 36). I was asked what actress I could see cast for the role and Anita Louise came to mind based on this thread. Louise was in a few costume\period films for Warner Bros and was 25. That would have been another film with both Marsha Hunt and Louise. A suggestion for Lana Turner for the role was also given, but Turner wasn't a very good actress at this stage of her career. Louise was a lot more experienced. Hey, I get why MGM cast Garson since she was becoming their #1 female talent. Good idea! Anita Louise would have made a great Elizabeth Bennet, and since they were thinking about Lana Turner she would have been perfect as Jane, the beautiful but rather placid sister. Marsha Hunt as Mary must never change.
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Post by Fading Fast on Aug 21, 2023 12:35:23 GMT
The casting change of Louise for Garson would have worked fine, but in fairness, despite plainly being too old for the role, Garson was fantastic in it. Her scenes with her dad were touching and she absolutely nailed the climatic face-off with Edna May Oliver as the wonderfully name Lady Catherine de Burgh. I've seen this movie several, okay many, times, but will always stop to watch that face-off scene (ditto Garson in the face-off scene with Mae Whitty in "Mrs. Miniver," which is just another great scene).
Also, while a much smaller role, so it might have fit Turner at that point in her career, I love Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane (she seemed to work playing any Jane back then, either a Bennet sister or Tarzan's mate). I thought she conveyed the genuine guileless sweetness of Jane perfectly.
Have either of you seen the 2005 version of "Pride and Prejudice" with Keira Knightley? While the 1940 is still the definitive version, IMHO, and the 1995 miniseries has the length to do the story more justice, the 2005 version is visually gorgeous. Plus I enjoyed Knightley in the role, which to James' earlier point, fit her age of twenty.
Now, if I would stop having fun on this forum right now, get my real work done, I could return to writing my review of "These Glamour Girls," which I hope to post later today if time permits. So much to do, so much to do.
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Post by Fading Fast on Aug 21, 2023 19:04:19 GMT
These Glamour Girls from 1939 with Lana Turner, Lew Ayres, Jane Bryan and Marsha Hunt
Even during the era of the strict Motion Picture Production Code, a few movies with real grit and social commentary found a way to sneak by the censors. These Glamour Girls did it by hiding its darkness and class criticism under a snappy title and plenty of MGM gloss.
When an upper-class college man, played by Lew Ayres, drunkenly slumming it in NYC, invites a taxi dancer, played by Lana Turner, to the college's upcoming "house parties," she's ecstatic that she'll be socializing with the famous college "Glamour Girls" she sees in the glossies.
When an excited Turner shows up at the college the following week, though, a now-sober Ayres has forgotten all about her. Since he also invited a girl of his class, played with sweetness by Jane Bryan, he rudely tries to pass Turner off to another boy.
When Turner decides to stay on for the weekend anyway, it sets off the main conflict in the movie. Ayres finds he really likes Turner, but he's close to being engaged to Bryan. At the same time, some of the "Glamour Girls" try hard to make taxi dancer Turner feel small.
These Glamour Girls, though, also has several subplots involving class, money, reputation and financial corruption. Plus, one slightly older girl, played heartbreakingly by Marsha Hunt, is mentally breaking down over fear that her "marriage window" is closing fast.
The climax, no spoilers coming, pivots on the Ayers-Bryan-Turner love triangle as the aforementioned class, money and corruption factors twist the triangle's geometry hard. Yet the movie's most dramatic moment is the crushing denouement of Hunt's last grasp at marriage.
Before all that, though, Turner, who's been talked down to by some and treated nicely by others, finally rips into the "Glamour Boys and Girls" with a good old-fashioned dose of "you're a bunch of spoiled and snooty kids" American egalitarianism. It's fun and needed to be said.
These Glamour Girls works because it starts out as another "isn't college pretty" movie, but slowly peels back the skin to show all the tensions, prejudices and anxieties simmering below the surface.
Even for the rich kids, who like the rest of us, don't get to choose their parents, there are plenty of pressures. "Boohoo" is an easy and flip response, but humans, like fish, only know the water they swim in.
While the movie hints at a social revolution, the irony is that it also shows and notes there are regular kids from modest backgrounds working their way through college in the 1930s. Yes, the Ivies were pretty elite, but there were plenty of colleges with working-class kids attending.
After WWII, the college class system wasn't broken by Trotskyites throwing stones through windows, but by the G.I. Bill and, over time, additional college aid and loans that led to higher education becoming meaningly more democratic.
Made at MGM, with MGM's gloss, These Glamour Girls has, surprisingly, a Warner Bros. like social message. It also has excellent acting, writing and directing, with plenty of snappy period college clothes, cars and architecture to give all the angst a very pretty backdrop.
As to that excellent acting, Ayres, old for the role, is still somehow in his sweet spot as the polished college man. Bryan is outstanding as the nice girlfriend who gets dumped on. And Turner, still learning her craft, shows her future promise as the townie who gives as good as she gets.
Yet it is Hunt's moving performance that will break your heart. She portrays a young woman suffering some sort of mental breakdown, in an era when that was usually hushed up, with agonizing sincerity.
Somehow in 1939, with the Motion Picture Production Code in control, not-radical MGM studios managed to make a smart college movie that denounced the elitism of the Ivies, while also making you sympathetic to the pressures many of the well-off college kids felt.
These Glamour Girls rises above the other college movies of the 1930s with a realism that belies the happy "rah-rah college" story those other movies were telling. Today, it serves as a cool time capsule, with some sharp social commentary mixed in, of 1930s college life.
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