How to Be Very, Very Popular

Betty grable, and what appears to be a marilyn monroe knockoff, sheree north. Two beautiful women, at a college graduation, hiding out from a mob boss. It's all pretty silly. The awesome charles coburn is doctor tweed, and fred clark is in here as marshall. Alice pearce (from bewitched!) is in here as miss sylvester. Bob cummings is the college student who doesn't seem to really belong there. The girls kind of hide out with the college students, some silly sub-plots. The story lines are way over the top, but it's good to see grable and clark in their roles. Sadly, alice pearce will die so young at 48 from cancer. Apparently, the real m. Monroe refused to take part in this film, and this was also the last film role for grable; she, monroe, and fred clark had just made how to marry a millionaire. It's fun, but goofy. So goofy, they hardly ever show this one. One of the films where north allegedly filled in for a marilyn monroe.

Stormy Tornado (Betty Grable) and Curly Flag (Sheree North) are a team of "interpretative dancers" (not "belly dancers" as incorrectly identified by a previous user comment) who witness the murder of Miss Cherry Blossom Wang and are the run from her killer. They pool their money to get on a bus and wind up in College City, still dressed in their stage costumes. They wind up in an all-boys college dorm and the film ensues with a series of not very funny events because of their situation, their lack of dress and Curly being accidentally hypnotized. This is one of Sheree North's first "big" roles (she was offered the part that Marilyn Monroe turned down, and at the time was viewed by Fox as their new "blonde" to replace their unwilling star Marilyn Monroe, who wanted more substantial roles). She delivers a very wooden performance. Betty Grable, on the other hand, made this her last film for Fox. While she delivers a typical sassy performance, she can not float the rest of the cast which is struggling with a really poorly written script. Orson Bean couldn't act his way out of a bag in this film. Tommy Noonan (Eddie) and Robert Cummings (Wedgewood) also deliver a zinger or two, but the film is really uneventful. A film only for die-hard fans of Grable or North.

Anemic non-musical remake of 1934's "She Loves Me Not" stars Betty Grable and Sheree North as "hoochie koochie" dancers in San Francisco who take it on the lam after witnessing a shooting at their dive in Chinatown; seeking refuge in a college fraternity house, North is inadvertently hypnotized by an amateur psychology major. Written by producer-director Nunnally Johnson, who based his screenplay on Benjamin Glazer's '34 version, which was itself an adaptation of both Ed Hope's book and Howard Lindsay's play, later reworked in 1942 as "True to the Army" (!). With such a lopsided pedigree, it isn't any wonder why the finished results are so tepid. Terrible acting, ugly décor, poor cinematography (from the usually-reliable Milton Krasner), and lunkhead attempts at 'modern' humor cause this Twentieth Century Fox dud to look like hand-me-down goods. It also served as Grable's final bow--some actors just know when it's time to get out (and one can hardly keep from laughing when chorine Betty is described as a dancer in her twenties!). Unrelievedly noisy and dull. * from ****

Unpleasant comedy about two belly dances on the run from gangsters. Orson Bean carries the movie on his back. However much Orson brings the movie up Sheree North drags it back down again. A real stinker. Do yourself a favour and avoid this movie at all costs.

Betty Grable's farewell film turned out to be a third and final version of She Loves Me Not. As She Loves Me Not and True To The Army were done at Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox must have shelled out a lot of money for the rights. It was not money well spent.

Even though Bob Cummings was supposed to be a college student even the youthful looking Cummings wasn't that young to carry it off. And that was using the fact that he was a perpetual student in the place, paid for with Grandpa's trust fund. Tommy Noonan and Orson Bean weren't convincing as college kids either.

The same plot gimmick was used, nightclub dancer witnesses murder and flees the scene. This time however it was two girls Betty Grable and Sheree North, a pair of strippers in a clip joint who see one of their own murdered while doing her bumps and grinds. They have a front row seat for the crime, but leave real quick and go as far as their money takes them.

Which is a small college town where the guys all go to school. Noonan fancies himself a hypnotist, but has no success with any other subject other than North and that was by accident. Then North goes into a Marilyn Monroe imitation for the rest of the film, climaxed when she does a striptease at the graduation ceremonies making that pretty unforgettable.

Monroe turned this one down and I think wisely. Her next film was Bus Stop one of her immortal successes. Sheree North did much better work in the future, this was not a film she would have liked to be remembered for.

As for Grable, according to a recent biography she liked working with Bob Cummings whom she had worked with in one of her big successes Moon Over Miami at her height. But while Cummings, pun intended gives it the old college try, Betty looks just plain bored throughout. No wonder she left Hollywood and concentrated on stage, television, and the nightclubs the rest of her life.

Nunnally Johnson wrote and directed this and with him at the helm and the cast he assembled with people like Rhys Williams, Fred Clark, Charles Coburn, and Alice Pearce you would have thought something better would have come forth.

How To Be Very Very Popular wasn't with me.