SWEET ROSIE O'GRADY

US, 1943, 74 minutes, Colour.
Betty Grable, Robert Young, Adolphe Menjou, Reginald Gardner, Virginia Grey.
Directed by Irving Cummings.

Sweet Rosie O’ Grady is a wartime Betty Grable musical. She was emerging as a very popular star at this time – especially with pinups and the armed forces.

This film is a remake of Love is News, a 1937 film with Loretta Young, Tyrone Power and Don Ameche. Betty Grable portrays a vaudeville star who has burlesque backgrounds and is keeping them secret, especially because she is engaged to an English duke (Reginald Gardner). A reporter from a muckraking paper is asked by the editor (Adolphe Menjou) to write an expose. He is played by Robert Young.

The film is brief, bright, colourful – wartime entertainment.

1. How entertaining a musical comedy? Quality?

2. A 20th Century Fox musical of the forties? A Betty Grable showcase? How conventional?

3, Colour photography, English and New York locations? Sets? The songs, dances? Special effects in the stage presentation of the songs?

4. The credibility of the plot? For musical comedy purposes? The success of a stage star? The newspaperman? Falling in leve?

5. Betty Grable as Rosie O'Grady, in England, success, marrying the Earl, the clash with Sam? Trying to put him down? The effect on herself? Her change to musical comedy and the parody of their relationship? The happy ending? Sam and his attack on her, wooing her, taking the parody? Marrying her?

6. The editor, the Count, Rosie's girlfriend?

7. The conflict, the crises, the tricks, the parody? Themes of human relationships? The film as a piece of Americana?