Girl Crazy

It is not easy to turn GIRL CRAZY into a disaster, given the Gershwin score and a somewhat serviceable plot - but the creators of this version have succeeded in doing just that. There were six writers given screen credit for this scenario: perhaps that was the problem, or maybe the screenplay was even worse until that number was reached.

The gags (can I call them that if they are not funny?) are so forced, so weak, so juvenile as to make an audience squirm. Wheeler and Woolsey were never worse; at their best (it says here) they were second-raters, with a very limited assortment of poses, gestures, and facial expressions. No one in this cast offers demonstrable talent. An amateur cast (and director) could have done more with the material (I've seen it happen). And let us not overlook totally mindless rendering of "I Got Rhythm" in the film's big production number.

Why did you tell me to watch this?

This is one of two filmed versions of George & Ira Gershwin's musical-Girl Crazy-I'm reviewing on this site. This one stars Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey as they end up in the West. Child performer Mitzi Green does some imitations during the "But Not for Me" number. Bert has another number with frequent female co-star Dorothy Lee. Kitty Kelly does the "I Got Rhythm" song which was partly choreographed by Busby Berkeley who later did that number in the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland version of GC. Oh, and among the players is Stanley Fields who makes a very funny nemesis for the comedy team. I mainly remember him as the sheriff in my favorite Laurel & Hardy movie, Way Out West. In summary, this version of Girl Crazy may not have a lot of the Gershwins' songs but it does have plenty of hilarity so there's that! P.S. Norman Taurog did retakes for this movie. He'd eventually direct the Mickey/Judy version of GC.

I saw this early RKO musical-comedy only for the music. The tagline, "Sensational Gershwin Songs", intrigued me so I wanted to see it. Though it has two Gershwin songs, including the memorable "I Got Rhythm", "Girl Crazy" is less a full-fledged musical than an endearingly riotous comedy, one of the funniest I have seen. IT is so funny, it hurts! The last time I laughed so hard in a movie was a Laurel & Hardy Two-Reeler called "Two Tars"(1928).

It has one hilarious gag after another. I wouldn't spoil the fun, but the "hypnotism" scene involving Woolsey & Wheeler and the buffoonish cowboy is priceless.

If you like Marx Bros, you will definitely like "Girl Crazy".

This movie isn't really that good a version of the 1930 Broadway Gershwin musical, as it leaves the songs aside and is reworked as more of a comedy vehicle for Wheeler and Woolsey. Eddie Quillan and Arline Judge are the flotsam hero and heroine – not really needed, except to murder ‘But Not For Me'. Dorothy Lee is pretty much wasted with little to do (just a couple of scenes and one song with Bert Wheeler – the classic Ella Fitzgerald later made famous, ‘You've Got What Gets Me').

The best bits really are the ones that are purely silly: the hypnotism scenes between the boys and the bad guy; the cacti dancing to ‘I Got Rhythm' (oddly sung here as ‘I've Got Rhythm' by sparky Kitty Kelly); Mitzi Green and her imitations (particularly of George Arliss!); little Wheeler elected as sheriff and then chased by the village heavy; and the long-distance taxi ride early in the film with the cardboard cop.

So the good news is it is a funny film with lots to enjoy on that front; however this movie doesn't do justice to the stage show; and the photography does most of the cast no favours.

Almost everyone involved hated this film – Quillan and Lee didn't see the finished article until several decades later and the songs are dealt with inappropriately. What a pity that the best movie versions of the Gershwin shows (Porgy and Bess; An American in Paris; and of course the remake of Girl Crazy, in 1943) came after George Gershwin died.

As this is one of the projects that young David Selznick did as a producer for Radio pictures before moving on to MGM and his own production company, it's shocking to think that this man (somehow universally celebrated for his taste) could have taken the great 1930 Broadway musical featuring Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers and reduced it to a Wheeler & Woolsey slapstick comedy; in the process, Selznick eliminated most of its great Gershwin songs among them "Bidin' My Time" and "Embraceable You" and treated the other immortal tunes like "But Not For Me" as novelty numbers. An appalling example of how old Hollywood didn't recognize genius when it stared it in the face.