Richard-23

...I attended this film twice--willingly, joyously and paid both times. It is a humdinger...and it is hard to say which performer is better...they are all wonderful...the two young men who portray Mr. Zeffirelli as a boy and young man are charming.. Florence is a presence and the light of Northern Italy is lovely and wraps them all in pale amber warmth...that makes the story seem less of a struggle than it probably really was. It is about a group of English and American women who live in Italy prior to WWII--how they work together to support and nurture an orphaned boy--and how the coming of the war affects them all...it is a memoir..and necessarily colored by the memory of the director... and his love for the people he is portraying. Unlike my neighbor upstairs (Mr. Fletch)...I thought this was a delightful work of art...with a cast to die for.

...I think it was made for British television...and it is a live performance...and it actually captures that... and it is a show full of fun and engaging performances. It is one of those shows that you enjoy and then enjoy more each time you see it.

..and with Marge and Gower Champion and Jack Lemmon...it is lots of fun. Fun is what Betty Grable was about...and this film is at its best during those sequences aimed at amusing. ...These days people do not understand Betty Grable very well. In her day she was everyman's and every womans ideal. Indeed no woman has broken Betty's box office record (eleven years in the top ten). And, in the forties and early fifties, women still dominated the box office to an amazing degree--Mom chose the films the family was going out to see. Though it was a bit early to be obvious, Betty in many ways represented a manifestation of what we would now call a liberated woman. She was nearly always working (in revealing clothing!), and she was self supporting. In real life she was a very successful working mother--and particularly during WWII she was an inspiration to women manning the homefront as much as an inspiration to the armed forces fighting overseas. She was pretty, talented, popular, and the highest salaried woman in the United States. Now she is remembered primarily as a 'pin up'--which she also was, but the title tends to diminish the many other factors that created her popularity. One thing is certain, in "Three for the Show" or any other of her starring films--she will entertain you royally within the limitations of the material she was given.