Mon amie Sally

Original title: My Gal Sal

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Rita Hayworth, Victor Mature, and Carole Landis in Mon amie Sally (1942)

At the end of the 19th century, the young Indiana boy Paul Dresser left his hometown for a long adventure that would eventually place him at the pinnacle of American music as a songwriter.At the end of the 19th century, the young Indiana boy Paul Dresser left his hometown for a long adventure that would eventually place him at the pinnacle of American music as a songwriter.At the end of the 19th century, the young Indiana boy Paul Dresser left his hometown for a long adventure that would eventually place him at the pinnacle of American music as a songwriter.

See production info at IMDbPro

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6.1/10

917

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See production info at IMDbPro

Won 1 Oscar
- 4 wins & 1 nomination total

User reviews16

Featured review

A musical curiosity

"My Gal Sal" is not an unpleasant musical, but it gets a more lavish treatment than it deserves. It's a typically fictionalized musical biopic, with Victor Mature playing Paul Dresser, a popular Midwestern songwriter of the "Gay 90s." (For younger readers, that's what the 1890s were called, though the description had to do with high spirits, not sexuality.) Rita Hayworth is Dresser's love interest and the title character. Several of the songs in the movie were not even the work of Dresser, though the title song is. As the movie notes at the beginning, Dresser, born Dreiser, was the older brother of famed novelist Theodore Dreiser, author of that grim classic "An American Tragedy." The screenplay is supposedly based on Dreiser's reflective essay "My Brother Paul." But if it were, this film would be a bit of a drag: Paul Dresser's fame was fairly brief and he died young, and Theodore Dreiser never wrote anything light. Hollywood was wise enough to make up some harmless stuff, pick a beautiful leading lady and play it all for fun.

gerdeen-1
Nov 19, 2008
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Trivia
Victor Mature was known within the movie community for having a sense of humor about his lack of acting, singing and dancing talents and supposedly once responded to being denied membership in a high-class social club for being an actor, by declaring: "I'm not an actor...and I've made 37 movies that prove it!"

Goofs
When Dresser introduces "The Pity Of It All," he hands the lyrics to Sally, but she sings them without looking at the sheet.

Quotes
Paul Dresser: Look. If you don't like my act, why don't you get out of here.
Fred Haviland: Like it? Why, you're the hit of the show.
Sally Elliott: It's one of the funniest acts I ever saw.
Paul Dresser: Funny? What's funny about it?
Sally Elliott: Wasn't it?
Paul Dresser: You know very well it wasn't, nobody else was laughing.
Sally Elliott: But there was two pianos. And that suit. What could you expect?
Paul Dresser: What's wrong with my suit?
Sally Elliott: It's all right if you can stand the noise.

Crazy credits
Rare for the era, the film cold-opens with a brief medley of performers singing bits of Dresser songs before dissolving into the main titles.