HOW TO BE VERY VERY POPULAR
US, 1955, 89 minutes, Colour.
Betty Grable, Sheree North, Charles Coburn, Robert Cummings, Orson Bean, Fred Clark, Tommy Noonan.
Directed by Nunnally Johnson.
How To Be Very Very Popular is an entertaining piece of '50s froth. Written and directed by writer Nunnally Johnson, it was Betty Grable's last film. It also served as a vehicle to introduce Sheree North. She had a brief career as a singer-comedienne but emerged in the '60s and '70s as a very strong character actress. The film is stolen by Charles Coburn as the venal professor. Robert Cummings and Tommy Noonan are the male leads. Fred Clark offers amusing support. The screenplay offers a West Coast variation on Damon Runyon situations. There is some pleasant music including the title and Sheree North does a striking 'Shake Rattle- and Roll'.
1. Popular American comedy? Entertaining? A vehicle for the stars?
2. The Cinemascope production? 1950s style? Glamour? Comedy?
3. The film as the end of Betty Grable's popular career? Her popularity? Sheree North? The sex comedies of the time - the Marilyn Monroe era?
4. The screenplay as a West Coast variation of Damon Runyon comedy situations? The burlesque, the strippers hiding from a killer, their being hard up, the bus flight, the murder? The university, the men at the university? The heroine being hypnotised? Their being undercover at the university? Mistaken identities, risqué farce? The climax and the 'Shake Rattle and Roll'? The film as a piece of '50s Americana?
5. Betty Grable and Sheree North and their style as Stormy Tornado and her friend? Dancers, strippers, the club, the shooting of their companion, their personalities, comic styles, songs and dances?
6. The satire on universities - wedge as the perennial student? The other men - poverty, wealth? Toby Marshall and his slowness? The lesson in hypnotism - and its 24-hour effect? The usual campus antics?
7. Charles Coburn as the professor - his venal ambitions, pomposity, humorous dialogue, the encounter with Marshall, the suspected Mrs. Marshall. his secretary etc.?
8. Marshall and his absence from America, the expectations for his son, the continued arrests? The various bald men and their arrests?
9. The personalities on the campus, the landlady, the secretary. the police?
10. The farcical sequences - the hypnotism, Salome and the dances? The Graduation - and the English academic's comment? The mistaken doors, hitting the bald men on the head? An enjoyable farce?
