THE SHOCKING MISS PILGRIM
US, 1947, 85 minutes, Colour.
Betty Grable, Dick Haymes, Anne Revere, Allyn Joslyn, Gene Lockhart, Elizabeth Patterson, Elizabeth Risdon, Arthur Shields.
Directed by George Seaton.
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim is a very pleasing vehicle for Betty Grable. She is Cynthia Pilgrim, who had graduated from business school in the 1880s and becomes a stenographer, mastering the new typewriter. She shocks people by working away from home, gets a job in a shipping company in Boston. Although the men object to her presence, she is able to charm them all, including the boss. However, she also becomes involved in the suffragette movement, endangering her job and her relationship with the boss.
Needless to say, there is a happy ending.
Betty Grable was very popular during the 1940s, especially for being a pin-up for the GIs. Dick Haymes was a popular crooner at the time.
The film was directed by George Seaton, a prolific writer, whose first major film direction job this was. He was to make The Miracle on Thirty-Fourth? Street the same year. As he moved into direction, he made a number of conventional comedies like For Heaven’s Sake but also significant films like The Country Girl. He also directed, in 1970, Airport.
1. The tone of the title? How enjoyable a film - as comedy, a musical, as a human interest story?
2. Comment on the quality of the production? A film of the late 40s, colour, the style, the romantic atmosphere, the comedy? Does it seem dated? how well can it be appreciated now?
3. The feminist theme: as an illuatration of thinking about women in the 1940s? The 1940s looking back to the 1870s? The response to this theme now? What attitudes towards women, their place in the world, their work, prejudices against them did the film offer?
4. Comment on the use of the atmosphere of secretaries for the feminist theme. The prejudice of people against secretaries, typewriters, women working in offices etc. How enjoyable was this as comedy? How ironic as reality?
5. How attractive was Betty Grable as the heroine? What kind of woman was she in herself? Her forcefulness, her relationship with man, her pride in her work? Her love for her employer? Her involvement with his aunt and the women's demonstrations? Her belief in woment right and role? The relationship with her employers mother? The fact that she had prepared nastily for the meeting. and the reality was so much better? Her relationship with the eccentrics in the house? (The anti-Boston tone and its later mellowing?) Was Dick Haymes an effective hero? His prejudices against women, his falling in love with Cynthia, his involvement in the women’s movement, his relationship with his aunt. his mother?
7. How enjoyable was Anne Revere's performance as the aunt? The sequences of the women’s demonstrations? The songs and the slogans, the swastikas and the points being made?
8. The characters in the office: satire on men, theassistant, prejudices etc?
9. How well did the film illustrate the chbices for Cynthia Pilgrim as regards marriage and women’s demonstrations?
10. How effective were the songs and the music? Their introduction into the film, their helping the action or their holding it up? As typical of a 1940s musical?
