The Powers Girl

George Murphy is a fine photographer, but he'd rather be taking pictures of anything but what he's paid for. When he snaps a photo of Anne Shirley falling in the mud, she loses her job, and to make it up, he has to promote her sister a meeting with Alan Mowbray, playing model magnate John Robert Powers. After the usual comic lies, he succeeds, and since she's Carole Landis, she's in. But Murphy can't make up his mind which girl he prefers.

Sometimes life is tough like that, I'm told. It's a fairly elaborate black-and-white musical comedy that has not aged very well, since the fame of Powers' modelling agency has faded over the years. It's unclear to me why they borrowed George Murphy from MGM without giving him much dancing to do. The in-movie music is provided by Benny Goodman and orchestra -- with a fine version of "I Know That You Know" -- and Dennis Day threatens to sing a couple of times. Really, it looks like they edited this movie down extensively, although at 93 minutes it's still A picture length. Still, what they left is engaging, if not superior.

This film is based on the real Powers Girls (among the real life graduates are Grace Kelly, Lee Remick, Jennifer Jones)and shows Anne Shirley and Carole Landis at their best. Top accolades to Benny Goodman and his orchestra and some great dancing and singing. Plot is paper thin but summarized incorrectly by Maltin. Anne Shirley is the one who sacrifices a potential windfall from a lawsuit to better the career of her sister Carole who wants to become a Powers girl. Landis is particularly luminous and believable. I was saddened to read of her suicide a few years later. I gave it a 5 out of 10.

John Robert Powers founded a New York model agency in 1923 and many Powers models went on to have Hollywood careers. By the 1940s many young women aspired to be "Powers Girls" - just like Kay, although the only real Powers Girl mentioned in the movie who went on to have a reasonable movie career was Linda Stirling, who became a 1940s serial queen.

The opening sequence is worth the whole film, the fabulous Benny Goodman Orchestra swinging it up "rain or shine" as a crowd of dancers jitterbug, lindy hop and jive during a shower of rain. The rest of the movie is the conventional story of two girls in love with the same guy - the very unprepossessing George Murphy. He doesn't even play a particularly nice person - lying to one girl so she will like him and instantly dropping her when he meets her more appealing sister!!!

Kay (Carole Landis) dreams of becoming a Powers girl so when her sister Ellen (Anne Shirley) is sacked from her teaching job for being photographed in an unflattering pose, Kay takes up her cause. Of course it is only to suit her own ends - Kay thinks the photographer Jerry (George Murphy) is really a Vice President and that he is best buddies with John Robert Powers (Alan Mowbray gives the film a touch of finesse).

For all Anne Shirley's top billing, she owed her agent no favours. She appeared at the beginning to establish the story then towards the end she reappears as she fights for her man. This movie came toward the end of a mostly unfulfilling career, although she did have one last swan song in the surprise hit "Murder, My Sweet" - she loved doing it and her career ended on a professional high.

The musical moments were the highlights - you had Benny Goodman, a singer, Dennis Day, who according to the credits was a singing discovery from Jack Benny's radio program - he lent his soaring vocals to "Out of This World" and "Three Dreams". A very young Peggy Lee was a knockout singer, even though she only pops up for a chorus of "The Lady Who Didn't Believe in Love's in Love". As a reviewer says you will remember her.

For all the publicity Carole got, it was not exactly a star making part - selfish, snooty sisters usually aren't - even though they may be dressed by Adrian. As well as that, she was not a newcomer, having come to Hollywood to break into the movies in 1936.