MOTHER WORE TIGHTS
US, 1947, 107 minutes, Colour.
Betty Grable, Dan Dailey, Mona Freeman, Connie Marshall, Robert Arthur, Sara Allgood, William Frawley, Ruth Nelson.
Directed by Walter Lang.
Mother Wore Tights is a pleasing musical about vaudeville days at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Betty Grable goes to San Francisco to work in business but, from a business family, she also goes into vaudeville. She falls in love with a dancer and marries him and raises a family.
Betty Grable had been very popular during World War Two, appearing in many musicals of the early 1940s. She teamed with Dan Dailey in this film and was to team with him in When My Baby Smiles at Me, My Blue Heaven and Call Me Mister. They made an agreeable and successful team, she singing and dancing, he an excellent dancer (who moved into some of the MGM musicals of the early 1950s).
The film was directed by Walter Lang who directed a number of these musicals and who made a lot of comedies at 20th Century- Fox as well as There’s No Business Like Show Business and The King and I.
1 An entertaining musical?
2. The musicals of the forties, at Twentieth Century Fox? The musicals of nostalgia, of vaudeville and burlesque? Betty Grable? Dan Dailey musicals?
3. The colour photography, the songs, the choreography?
4. How conventional a plot? The flashback structure from the point of view of the young daughter, the ageing parents, the narrative and the valuation by the daughter of her parents and their way of life? The conventional plot with the young girl at school, family, seeking work, accidentally becoming an actress and dancer, success, marrying the leading man, ups and downs of career, family, the problems of background and eldest daughter's would-be snobbery, happy resolution? Why do
audiences enjoy this conventional kind of material? How well was it done?
5. The character of 'Mother' - the irony of the title with its risque overtones? Betty Grable and her style? Her singing and dancing at school, her place in the family, her being willing to go on the stage in New York, the clashes with Frank Burt, her love for him, her building up her career, combining It with Frank's, her giving up the stage and devoting herself to her children, her mother tricking her into going back on stage, her devotion to her children, her practical wisdom in their bringing up? Her vindication with her daughter's finally coming through her snobbery? An engaging characterization? How was It parallelled by Dan Dailey's portrayal of Dad as the lead singer, helped by Mother, a good team, marriage, fatherhood, success?
6. The characters of the two daughters? Iris and her devotion to her parents, her wanting to go to school, her reactions at school, the importance of the sequence on the train with the vulgar stage couple and her humiliation, her worry about her parents' performance, the headmistress and her wisdom in taking the girls to the theatre, Iris' inability to accept this? Her change of heart and the final singing of her parents' song? The younger daughter and her loyalty to her parents, providing the narrative?
7. How attractive were the songs, burlesque performances, old favourites, the varieties of styles in their presentation? The dancing?
8. The contribution of the minor characters? Mother's parents, the other chorus girls, the theatre people, school etc.?
9. These films are considered wholesome. What values are meant by wholesome? Ordinary themes of goodness, right and wrong, family loyalties and love?
