My Gal Sal

20th Century Fox, 1942
Starring Rita Hayworth, Victor Mature, John Sutton, and Carole Landis
Directed by Irving Cummings
Music by Paul Dressler and others; Lyrics by various

20th Century Fox tried for years to get this one off the ground. Alice Faye and Betty Grable, tired of the constant historical musicals offered to them, turned it down. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck eventually borrowed Rita Hayworth from Columbia to play the title role of the muse and true love of 1890's composer Paul Dressler. How does the colorful story of his life and work look now? Let's head to Indiana as Dressler (Mature) is having a fight with his minister father and find out...

The Story: Dressler has no interest in going to the seminary to become a priest like his father. His real interest is in music. After being tarred and feathered by locals who wanted retaliation for being tricked by a snake oil salesman, he takes up with a traveling medicine show. He enjoys writing songs for Mae Collins (Landis) and her father (Walter Catlett), until his music and his flashy suits are snubbed by haughty New York stage star Sally Elliott (Hayworth). He eventually moves to New York, where he discovers that she's written lyrics to his unpublished songs. With the help of a small-time publisher (James Gleason), he's able to reclaim his song...but it's become a hit with her lyrics.

This becomes the beginning of an off-again, on-again relationship between the volatile Sally and clothes-loving Dressler. She already has a lover, her producer Fred Haviland (Paul Sutton). Not only is Mae still interested in him, but he also finds a lover in the Countess Mariana Rossini (Mona Maris). When Sally finally gets fed up with Dressler's affairs and leaves New York, he has his first flop. It'll take help from their friends to bring the two back together for one more big hit song.

The Song and Dance: Hayworth glows in this sumptuous Technicolor confection. No wonder the art direction won an Oscar. The sets, and especially those frilly, colorful costumes that Sally and Paul tear into, are gorgeous and relatively accurate for New York and the Midwest in the late 1800's. There's some fabulous musical numbers as well, with Hollywood choreographer Hermes Pan making a rare appearance as Hayworth's partner in "On the Gay White Way."

Favorite Number: Hayworth dances beautifully with Pan in the glamorous "Gay White Way"...which Mature heckles in retaliation for her snubbing him at the traveling show. Hayworth performs the charming "Come and Tell Me" as a glittering dance routine with the male chorus.  She and Mature (or their dubbers) get to introduce two lovely ballads, the jaunty "Oh the Pity of It All" and "Here You Are" when he's telling her how he wrote them at the piano. "On the Banks of the Wabash" and "Me and My Fella and a Big Umbrella" are sweetly nostalgic romps for Hayworth and the chorus, with down-home and beach themes respectively.

Trivia: Dressler was the older brother of author Theodore Dreisler, who was one of the writers on the film. (Dressler changed his name for show business.)

Other women considered for Hayworth's part included Irene Dunne and Mae West; Don Ameche was considered for Dressler.

"On the Banks of the Wabash" was such a hit, it became the state song of Indiana in 1913.

Most of the songs in the movie, including "Pity of It All" and "Here We Are," are actually the work of studio songwriters Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin.

What I Don't Like: First of all, this is another "biography" that doesn't have that much to do with the subject matter. Dressler did run away from home to work with traveling minstrel shows, he did finally drop the traveling shows when his songs gained national fame, he did become a silent partner with a New York publishing company that exclusively published his songs for years. However, his life was even more colorful than what was depicted here, starting with "My Gal Sal" was likely named after a bordello owner named Sally with whom he had an affair.

Second, Mature is clearly out of place here. Like John Payne, he never was comfortable in musicals, no matter how often the studio keeping throwing him into them. Not only are he and Hayworth clearly dubbed, but Dressler and Sally's on-again, off-again relationship is more tiresome than romantic. A "romance" that starts with the lovers trying to get revenge on each other and almost ends with them literally tearing their clothes to shreds is more mean than funny. There's also the brief but annoying Indian stereotypes at the medicine show.

The Big Finale: The elaborate numbers alone makes it worth a watch for fans of 40's musicals or Hayworth.

Home Media: Currently on DVD from the 20th Century Fox Cinema Archives. The Blu-Ray from Twilight Time is on the pricey side.

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