Cover Girl

“At Columbia, Charles Vidor's Cover Girl (1944) was certainly one of the best musicals of the period. It combined two elements: a light-hearted examination of the world of fashion, dealt with in a vein of purest fantasy - the heroine, Rusty Parker (Rita Hayworth) is translated from Brooklyn singer to cover girl for the Golden Wedding issue of Vanity Magazine - and an evocation of back-stage life, observed with equal non-realism. It was ideal escapist fare for G.I.'s and those at home in the last year but one of the war.

“The best numbers rise above the rest: in ‘Make Way For Tomorrow,' written, like the rest of the excellent score, by Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, the stars - Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly and Phil Silvers - dance in a burst of optimistic exuberance out of a restaurant and down a street, using dustbins, a milkman and a drunk as part of the routine, prancing up and down steps; the number was nicely designed by Kelly himself.” Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, “Hollywood In The 40s”

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