Dance, Girl, Dance

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Dance, Girl, Dance
Directed by	Dorothy Arzner
Produced by	Erich Pommer
Written by	Vicki Baum (story), Frank Davis, Tess Slesinger
Starring	Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball
Cinematography	Russell Metty
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures
Country	USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Dance, Girl, Dance is a film released in 1940, directed by Dorothy Arzner.

In 2007, Dance, Girl, Dance was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", describing it as Arzner's "most intriguing film" and a "meditation on the disparity between art and commerce. The dancers, played by Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball, strive to preserve their own feminist integrity, while fighting for their place in the spotlight and for the love of male lead Louis Hayward."^[1]

Dance, Girl, Dance was edited by Robert Wise, whose next film as editor was Citizen Kane and who later won Oscars as director of West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

1 Cast
2 Plot
3 Reception
4 References

[edit] Cast

Maureen O'Hara as Judy O'Brien
Louis Hayward as James 'Jimmy' Harris Jr.
Lucille Ball as Bubbles/Tiger Lily White
Virginia Field as Elinor Harris
Ralph Bellamy as Steve Adams
Maria Ouspenskaya as Madame Lydia Basilova

[edit] Plot

Good friends Judy and Bubbles are both dancers. While Bubbles uses her good looks and blatant sexuality to land jobs, Judy is a dedicated ballerina.

[edit] Reception

In an October 1940 review, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described the film as a "a saga of glamour-struck chorines to end all sagas of said glamour-struck chorines" and a "cliché-ridden, garbled repetition of the story of the aches and pains in a dancer's rise to fame and fortune."^[2]