THESE GLAMOR GIRLS

US, 1939, 79 minutes, Black and white.
Lew Ayres, Lana Turner, Tom Brown, Richard Carlson, Jane Bryan, Anita Louise, Marsha Hunt, Ann Rutherford, Mary Beth Hughes, Ernest Truex.
Directed by S. Sylvan Simon.

These Glamor Girls was an early starring role for Lana Turner – and she comes across very strongly as a taxi dancer mixed up with society women in New York. Lew Ayres portrays a college student, son of a very wealthy businessman, who invites Lana Turner to one of the college house parties when he is drunk. She turns up, is an embarrassment, he tries to do the right thing by her. However, this is a portrait of college where the students are very snobbish (quite a contrast to the spring break kind of movies of the 1980s).

In the range of society women there is Jane Bryan, who is poor, but hopes to marry Lew Ayres. However, she does the decent thing and draws back, because she really is in love with a poorer student working his way through college, played by Richard Carlson. Anita Louise is the arrogant and snobbish friend. Marsha Hunt is the older student, desperate for a husband. Ann Rutherford portrays a young and skittish woman, influenced by her mother, trying to reform her boyfriend. Mary Beth Hughes is also a rich young woman.

The men don't come out of the film particularly well except for Richard Carlson. There is an unnecessary comic interlude with Ernest Truex as a drunken alumnus of Harvard who mixes up the colleges.

The film is interesting as a portrait of how people saw college students in 1939. However, there is quite an implicit criticism in the police of the central characters – and a finale where people make better decisions, especially when Lew Ayres discovered his father has been involved with fraud. He then wants to make a life of his own – and with Lana Turner.

There is some sharp dialogue in the MGM style of the period – it was also the year when The Women came out and this is in some ways a minor version of that kind of film-making and focus on characters.