The Girl Most Likely

This role was so beneath Powell. You can see why she left Hollywood two years later. She is almost 30 years old here and still being given the part of the young innocent being courted for marriage. I have no problem with the premise but the storyline and direction is totally amateur hour. This is really at the beginning of movies taking a turn for the worse as the studio system collapses. The one interesting thing about this film from a sociological perspective is you can really see the beginning of the sexual revolution as there is a scene here where there are teams of couples on the beach wrapped around each other (you will see a lot more of this in the next five-year period with all of the beach party movies).

This is an odd, but charming, little film. A remake of an old Ginger Rogers film called Tom, Dick or Harry. But somehow in musicalizing it and making the changes necessary for the new location, something has been lost and I just can't quite put my finger on it.

Your have a great cast! Jane Powell, fresh from her MGM days. Kaye Ballard in one of her very rare movie roles (there are times when she still seems to be playing to the balcony) and a great supporting cast of people like Frank Caddy, Una Merkel, Cliff Robertson, Tommy Noonan and Keith Andes, who was also rarely seen on film. The choreography by Gower Champion is bright and inventive, especially the number on the beach and a score by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. What else could someone want?

I still don't know.

Ms Powell's character has no redeeming characteristics. She is out for one thing and one thing only - to marry a rich man and she doesn't care who she steps on along the way. Then when she does have the millionaire she just drops him suddenly,on the very hour of their wedding, to go back to Fiancée #2, the mechanic, with no thought to Fiancée #1 (her childhood friend) who seems to be the only one honestly in love with her. Ah love - one can never understand it.

This movie features mostly people not known for their singing or their dancing... singing and dancing. The story is pretty weak and the musical numbers and dances are uninspired to put it mildly. Some of the principals were fortunate enough to be in much better films than this; how they ended up here I don't know but it's just a lame effort. The sets and color are nice enough and there are some interesting period touches for the 1950's, but overall, it's not a movie you'll finish watching (if you DO finish it) and want to see it ever again.

Is regrettably viewing it through a 21st century lens. It was not made in the 2000s. It was made in the 1950s, and should be judged accordingly. For its time, it was witty, clever, whimsical, and sharp, with inspired choreography by Gower Champion and direction by screwball comedy master Mitchell Leisen. The cast is giving it their all. Una Merkel, Jane Powell, Cliff Robertson and supporting cast go a long way toward overcoming the modest budget and not-entirely-original story. It's a romantic-comedy-musical that's fun and full of life. How on earth anyone could expect it to conform to a politically correct standard of the 2020s is beyond comprehension. Yes, Howard Hughes had run RKO into the ground by the time this film was made, and it shows around the edges. But if you let yourself be swept into the fifties fantasy suspension of disbelief, there are riches galore and enjoyment on a grand scale to be had. I love this movie.

The Girl Most Likely has the dubious distinction of being the last film ever shot by RKO before the studio folded. If it looks familiar it is a musical remake of the Ginger Rogers classic Tom, Dick, and Harry. Standing in for Ginger is Jane Powell recently of MGM and directing is Mitchell Leisen. But even with those two considerable talents, The Girl Most Likely is a far cry from some of the classic expensive musicals that Powell did at MGM like Seven Brides For Seven Brothers.

The serviceable, but unmemorable score was written by the songwriting team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane who also did better things at MGM like Meet Me In St. Louis.

The Girl Most Likely does faithfully follow the plot of the film from which it was adapted. Jane who was getting a little old for these kind of parts now despite her diminutive size plays a young woman newly in the work force, but with an eye for marriage. And she accepts at different times proposals of marriage from three different guys, go getting real estate salesman Tommy Noonan, Bohemian auto mechanic Cliff Robertson, and her millionaire boss Keith Andes whom she really set her cap for.

Tom, Dick and Harry had some imaginary sequences where Ginger Rogers imagined life with each of her three prospective husbands and those do lend themselves to musical numbers. Somehow I think if this had been done at MGM by the Arthur Freed unit it would have come out a lot better.

In the supporting cast take note of Kaye Ballard as Jane's best friend in the Eve Arden part and Frank Cady and Una Merkel as her parents.

As The Girl Most Likely follows the plot of Tom, Dick and Harry those of you who saw that film know who Jane winds up with. But you won't get that out of me.