Vênus & Cia.

Produced by Will Cowan, who produced most of Universal's musical two-reelers, this is basically one of Cowan's band parades with a perfunctory story sprinkled in between numbers. It's typical Leon Errol bedroom farce - he has to pretend to be married or his sister will cut off his inheritance. So he feigns marriage to a showgirl from a club he supports singlehandedly. But the showgirl falls in love with Errol's grown son. Grace McDonald is the showgirl and Harriet Hilliard gets to play a villainess (sort of) as well as sing a couple of songs. But the BIG surprise in GALS INCORPORATED is Betty Kean. Betty, whose sister was Jane Kean, was married to Lew Parker. This is one of her few films and it's a pity she didn't do more. Not only does she have great deadpan dogface delivery but she dances up a storm too. Betty and Jane must have had some swell night club act. Anyway, it's doubtful this little programmer will ever find its way onto DVD or even TCM, but if you should happen across it (I recently bought a 16mm print) be sure and watch. It's worth an hour of your time.

Love The Music, The Girls, The Director and of course Leon! I found and bought a 16mm print of this film a few ago from a lady on-line who found it in a projection booth of an old movie theater that had closed down. I guess it belonged to the projectionist because most movie houses only ran 35mm films. Maybe I'm just a sucker for this kind of motion picture, but I just love this movie! Other than Leon, Harriet Nelson went on to bigger things with television. Also it is interesting that most of the Gals film careers seems to have ended by the late 1940's! Grace McDonald was a beautiful woman! Betty Kean was one heck of a dancer! Lillian Cornell another hot 1940's chick! Having grown up in the 1960's and collecting Big Band 78rpm records, of course I loved seeing Jo Stafford and The Pied Pipers! Love old Leon's wise cracks to his sister played by Minna Phillips! I must have projected the print a dozen times in the last five years, and here is it, September 2020 and I'm going to project the print yet again on the big screen tonight! Oh yea, did I mention Glen Gray and His Orchestra and the opening scene with a couple dancing a fast jitterbug! Who cares if it's considered a "B" movie! I would rather watch this flick from the 1940's over anything made during the last 40 years on TV or at the movies! I guess at almost 60 years old, I'm joining the ranks of "an old fuddy-duddy" So I better get the reels out of the shipping case and set up the "rapid start and stop machine" for an enjoyable evening with illusion of photographs and sounds to trick my brain into thinking I'm somehow back in the 1940's ready to swing! Universal Studios is so stupid, the negative probably burned up in the recent fire which destroyed thousands of priceless audio records! Email me and I will send you a DVD copy I made off this print! Anyway, it's time to swing! Now where did I put that Covid-19 mask????