THE STORK CLUB

US, 1945, 98 minutes, Black-and-white.
Betty Hutton, Barry Fitzgerald, Don De Fore, Robert Benchley, Bill Goodwin, Iris Adrian, Mary Young.
Directed by Hal Walker.

This is a Betty Hutton film. She had been singing for some years and made some films like And The Angels Sing as well as The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. But, with The Stork Club, headlining the film, she was at the beginning of her heyday – until the mid-1950s. She was to make The Perils of Pauline, Let’s Dance with Fred Astaire, Annie Get Your Gun, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Surprisingly, her co-lead was Barry Fitzgerald who had just won an Oscar for his supporting role in Going My Way. He brings his inimitable Irishness to his role as a millionaire who is rescued from drowning by Betty and decides to help her financially but anonymously. But he wants to watch how she responds – she with generosity but extravagance, he looking on and sometimes in despair about the money spent. Robert Benchley is his lawyer. Don De Fore is Betty’s GI boyfriend, bandleader, but prone to be suspicious about her behaviour and relationships. In fact, he is a bit of a damper on the whole film.

Betty gets to sing some vigorous songs by popular writers of the time as well as some quiet ballads.

It is basically the story of a hat check girl at the Stork Club, her friends, the manager, her kind deed, her enjoying buying clothes, minks, getting a huge apartment, housing her boyfriend’s band in the adjoining apartment, trying to help him while he disapproves of her, taking care of the old man who, at first, she thinks is poor, trying to get him a job, finally meeting his wife, realising the truth, trying to fix everything up.

It was released at the end of World War II, something a bit cheery after the American experience of the war.