Variety Girl (1947) User Reviews (9)

The Paramount studio family

[jotix100 · 6/10 · 6 June 2008]

"Variety Girl", a film from 1947, showed up recently on cable. The film, which takes the theme of the Variety Club, which was a charitable organization involving well known movie people, is an excuse for showcasing the talent players employed by the studio. Paramount was at the time one of the most powerful places in which movies were made. As such, the idea behind this picture was to show how united and family-like the studio was.

The story is paper thin. It presents an implausible situation about two young women trying to make it in the movie industry. They, like thousand other hopefuls, attracted by the glamour of Hollywood came to Los Angeles in droves to be discovered. This is exactly what Katherine Brown and Amber Lavonne try to do with amazing results.

The fun in watching "Variety Girl" is recognizing stars, larger than life, being caught in the act of being themselves. Thus, we see the likes of Alan Ladd, Dorothy Lamour, Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Barbara Stanwych, Gary Cooper, William Holden, William Bendix, and many others involved in either the show that takes the center of the story, or just around the studio, mixing with colleagues and extras.

The funniest sequence involved Olga San Juan, who plays Amber, emoting to the high heavens just to be noticed by the many diners at the Brown Derby. Also the singing duo of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in their rendition of Harmony.

This is just an entertainment as conceived by the studio, no doubt. The best way to watch it is just to do so without expecting anything other than a smile. That way it will not disappoint.

Hard to resist!

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 9 June 2018]

The flimsy story is an excuse for a wonderful parade of some of our favorite stars - some of them doing unusual or uncharacteristic things, and doing them rather well.

Alan Ladd for instance joins Dorothy Lamour in singing "Tallahassee", whilst the ultra-lively Pearl Bailey has "Tired", and Gary Cooper saddles up a wooden horse on a carousel!

True, there is a bit overmuch propaganda for the Variety Club for my taste and it's surprising other show-business personalities didn't object to the Club's annual banquet being turned into an all-Paramount affair.

On the other hand, there's so much fun and good humor in the picture, plus of course, an inside view of Paramount Studios (very much confettied and hokied-up of course, but still more entertaining than a realistic tour of Monogram, say), that Variety Girl is hard to resist.

Tour de Weak

[writers_reign · 5/10 · 31 July 2015]

This was arguably the last of the 'all-star' spectaculars generated by the second world war and alas it ranks a bad nowhere to such admittedly ho hum entries as Hollywood Canteen and Thank Your Lucky Stars. On the plus side buffs will welcome the chance to see Frank Ferguson in a rare leading role and whilst it's true than many of the Paramount 'names' are wasted there is the odd moment - Ray Milland answers the phone in his dressing room by removing it from the porcelain bowl below the ceiling light and Alad Ladd reveals a pleasant singing voice in Frank Loesser's Tallahassee - it would, of course, have been a 'natural' to have seen Ladd teamed with frequent co-star Veronica Lake in something but the studio had let her go the year before. Worth a look but that's about all.

An all-star tribute to the philanthropic Variety Clubs International

[Varlaam · 4/10 · 1 October 1999]

... and that's as flimsy an excuse for a parade of stars as there ever was. This one seems more forced and artificial than such films normally do.

Many of the stars have little or nothing to do in their cameos: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Diana Lynn, and especially Robert Preston. Perhaps they're the lucky ones, given the limp nature of the script. They might have wound up like Spike Jones -- he and his City Slickers are far more obnoxious here than they were in "Thank Your Lucky Stars" (1943). Or the pitiable Alan Ladd, singing about that greatest of cities, Tallahassee, Florida. Seriously.

The occasional bright spots include Paulette Goddard wearing soapsuds, and Ray Milland hiding his telephone in an overhead light fixture, à la "The Lost Weekend".

I was also keen to see the rarely glimpsed, grey-haired Glenn Tryon, the male lead in 1928's magnificent "Lonesome", one of the final great achievements of the American silent film. "Lonesome" is comparable in some ways to King Vidor's "The Crowd", but is much less frequently discussed.

I think few would argue if I were to say that "Variety Girl" is for completists only.

Caveat emptor: This film's recent video release in the Bob Hope Collection has the George Pal Technicolor sequence in black and white.

All Hail the Variety Clubs

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 24 August 2006]

I've said this often enough. There is no way I will ever give a film like this a bad review. Just an unregenerate stargazer I guess.

The demise of the studio system makes this kind of film impossible now. You couldn't possibly afford to pay all the talented people here what they would be worth on the open market. But when they're all working at Paramount studios at the time, such films are possible.

The thin plot of this film is that young Mary Hatcher who back as an infant was left in a movie theater and adopted by the managers of several theaters. She became a project for them and the cause of why they founded the Variety Club Charitable Foundation.

Mary's grown up now and has aspirations to be an actress. She goes to Paramount where Frank Ferguson is now a big wig. She and a goofy friend Olga San Juan get everyone confused as to who is who. Especially young DeForest Kelley who is a Paramount talent scout.

Both Hatcher and Kelley were pretty unknown at the time. Hatcher had in fact come from Broadway and the original production of Oklahoma where she had replaced Joan Roberts in the lead. This was DeForest Kelley and it was only his second film. But I seem to remember he got a big break a little less than 20 years later playing a futuristic doctor on some science fiction show.

But this is really just an excuse to have all the Paramount name talent strut their stuff. One interesting sequence was one where Alan Ladd hijacks an airliner and in the midst of a dramatic scene bursts into song with Dorothy Lamour about the capital city of Florida, Tallahassee. Ladd had a pleasant, if not great singing voice and I'm sure he loved the opportunity to spoof his own hardboiled image.

Gary Cooper made an obligatory appearance and this turned out to be his farewell appearance with Paramount, the studio that discovered and developed him.

Of course heading the cast were the two that really kept Paramount in the black in those days, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Bing was in the midst of a five year run as the nation's number one box office attraction. And in 1949 he would be succeeded by one Bob Hope. They have a duet called Harmony in which the rest of the cast joins in at the finale.

Curiously enough Bing only recorded Tallahassee and with the Andrews Sisters. Why he and Hope didn't do Harmony on record is a mystery to me.

Just about everyone on the lot but Betty Hutton got into this one. I wonder where she was?

A supposedly behind the scenes look at Paramount....and a limp story to tie it all together.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 26 May 2021]

"Variety Girl" is one of those films that was popular in the 1930s and 40s which supposedly gives audiences a behind the scenes look at a Hollywood Studio. In each, the various big-time contract players are seen as a VERY scripted version of themselves...and most of the major studios made films like this. Some examples include "The Hollywood Revue of 1929", "The Goldwyn Follies" as well as "Paramount on Parade". For the most part, these films were pure hooey and they are more self-promotion than entertaining when you see them today.

In "Variety Girl", it the story of a very talented young woman and her new, and VERY obnoxious friend....and the women's road to discovery by Paramount. As far as the cast goes, some are actors pretending to be Paramount executives (such as DeForrest Kelley playing a publicity agent) and many are real actors, writers and directors playing a version of themselves. This would include Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Barbara Stanwyck, Paulette Goddard, Gary Cooper, Ray MIlland, Dorothy Lamour, Alan Ladd and quite a few other actors. Non-actors playing themselves include Cecil B. DeMille, George Marshall, Spike Jones and Mitchell Leissen.

I enjoyed seeing the various cameos, though many were simply too brief. What I didn't love was the character played by Olga San Juan. Like Mary Hatcher's character, both were supposedly newbies to Hollywood trying to break into films with Paramount but they simply made San Juan's character too despicable and obnoxious....to the point where it really hurt the film. It was supposed to be funny...but I found her character to be grating every second she was on the screen and her acting way beyond just broad! The 'joke' about all this is that the studio keeps mixing up the two ladies, and when one misbehaves, the other is blamed.

So is this worth seeing? Well, it depends. If you are a fan of old films, you can look past the unlikable story and San Juan and just enjoy the many cameos, as practically everyone at Paramount seems to be in this movie. If you are not a fan of old films, the cameos won't mean much to you and the story itself is simply bad. None of this is very surprising, as most of these 'behind the scenes' films stink and are very short on actual plot. One of the few exceptions I can think of is "Thank Your Lucky Stars" from Warner Brothers. The rest are just more self-promotion than anything else and are tough to love...and this is definitely true of "Variety Girl".

Cheap looking tour of Paramount Studios.

[Cajun-4 · 1/10 · 3 June 2000]

There's plenty of stars in this homage to Variety clubs international but precious little entertainment. A poor script and shoddy production values make this movie look as though it was shot over weekends on whatever sets happened to be available. Painful to sit through at times with dated comedy routines that were probably not very funny even at the time. Of the performers Pearl Bailey does a not bad musical number, and Bing Crosby and Bob Hope come the closest to being funny.

All star fun, behind the scenes movie-making 1947 style & OK backstory

[julisa · 8/10 · 23 July 2016]

This movie is a rollicking treat in so many ways.

Firstly it is a wonderful nostalgic trip around Paramount studios in 1947. Bing's makeshift golf course, sound stages and administration buildings.

It is also an insight into how pictures were made. In the Cecil B. DeMille scene set there is of course no blue/green screen. The projection light goes on, and suddenly you see the back projection of the river. And when the actress walks behind the screen you see her shadow looming prominently. Or in William Bendix's kitchen where you see the sink is simply a board with nothing underneath, and the actor runs out of a back door discretely hidden in the scenery.

Even the backstory used as a link to the stars is entertaining. Frank Ferguson with his distinct gravelly voice, who generally plays small parts such as the townsman in westerns who gets shot after about 5 minutes, gives his all as the studio head, Olga San Juan's performance isn't too forced and De Forrest Kelley is a curiosity in a rare leading (sort of) nice guy role. But of course the crowd wants to see the stars. And boy do they shine. Hope & Crosby's golf skit, Alan Ladd in a singing role with Dorothy Lamour, even Pinto Colvig (best known as the voice of Grumpy & the first voice of Goofy) in performance doing voice over.

Sadly the print I saw (Universal Vault DVD series)has the Puppetoon sequence in black and white (even though the credits say it's in color).

Apart from that frustrating issue, in summing up, just relax and soak up the fun.

The best variety film out there

[HotToastyRag · 8/10 · 12 November 2018]

You know those lousy movies that were basically taped variety shows for WWII soldiers, with tons of cameos and no actual story? Well, Variety Girl is not one of those movies. Technically, it is, but since it does have a story, and it's the best variety film I've ever seen, I hesitate to lump it among all the bad ones. The film starts out by telling the story of a baby being left in a movie theater. The theater executives adopted the girl and provided a good education for her, but they haven't been active in her life. So, when she sets up a screen test in Hollywood, the big wigs who are her adoptive fathers, don't recognize her! While the sweet and talented Olga San Juan hopes for a Hollywood break, the conniving Mary Hatcher tries to horn in on her opportunity. Checking in with Olga's name, she weasels her way into the screen test instead. Which girl will make the grade, and which girl will get the guy, DeForest Kelly? You'll have to watch this barrel of laughs to find out.

Sprinkled in among Olga and Mary's tour of Hollywood are cameos from Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Ray Milland, Alan Ladd, Paulette Goddard, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Joan Caulfield, Sonny Tufts, Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden, Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Da Silva, William Bendix, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Gail Russell, Macdonald Carey, Billy De Wolfe, Mona Freeman, Patric Knowles, Cass Daley, Cecil Kellaway, Pearl Bailey, Spike Jones, Mitchell Leisen, Frank Faylen, Cecil B. DeMille, and Frank Butler-who hilariously criticizes a set of dialogue only to be told that he wrote it a few years earlier!

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope have pretty lengthy and funny cameos as t hey both help the girls break into show business. This movie is hilarious; even if you take a popcorn break during some of the songs or skits that last a little too long, it's still a ton of fun. Mary Hatcher tries to get Cecil B. DeMille's attention at a restaurant, so she pretends to get a phone call right in front of his table so she can rattle off emotional dialogue. Cecil and his lunch companion Frank Butler take bets as to which impersonation she'll do next, from Bette Davis to Gene Autrey's horse!