Mon amie Sally

My Gal Sal is a simply splendid movie and it's a true wonder why it's not readily available to buy when some of Rita's less good movies (Lady From Shanghai, Salome) are in abundance.

Victor Mature plays Paul Dresser who's a song writer from the country who meets a gal called Sal (Rita) whom he hates, then eventually loves. She's a big time performer who laughs at his silly little show, so he gets his own back by going and laughing at hers! But they have to put their differences aside soon when her words and his music make a hit song, and he finally gets the break he needs.

Lovely that it was shot in technicolour, and the songs and dances are great fun to watch. Favourite part - where Sal looses her temper with Paul and cuts up all his clothes, leading him to do the same to her, and when he hires a quartet to sing outside her window in the middle of the night for three hours, not letting anyone in the building get any sleep, and they don't even stop singing when people drop potplants, or tip pitchers of water, onto them! 10/10

The plot is silly & preposterous, as is the case most often when it comes to these eye candy extravaganzas, but it is kept alive by the irrepressible charm of Rita Hayworth & Victor Mature, not to mention Fox's customary glowing Technicolor (there are some moments that are not only gorgeous to look at, but also sublimely awe-inspiring and evocative of its Gay 90s milieu).

"My Gal Sal" is basically a nostalgic period musical, about 1890s songwriter Paul Dreiser (Mature) who leaves his country town in Indiana to find a big success on Broadway in New York. He meets and falls in love with a musical performer, a gal named Sally Elliott (Hayworth). They start hating each other at first but soon grow into one another. Their contrived romance is kept afloat by various passable numbers, including the title tune (written by Paul), "On the Big White Way," "The Convict and the Bird", "Liza Jane", and "Mr Volunteer".

Not a classic, but it passes the time. Try to watch it along with Hayworth's other musical of 1942, the gloriously carefree "You Were Never Lovelier" with Fred Astaire.

MGM musicals dominated the genre. No one could make musicals like they could, although a few studios tried with lesser success, as is the case with this one done by Fox in 1942.

Irving Cummings was a director that tried his hands at directing musicals with mixed results. "My Gal Sal" is the biography of Paul Dresser, an American composer who wrote tuneful, if somewhat bland songs. The screen play is by Theodore Dreiser, a writer on his own right, but who had nothing to add to make this film work better.

This is a musical that has a dated look from the beginning. The situation is preposterous, at best.

Rita Hayworth shines as the red headed Sally Elliott, a singing star of the musical theater of the time. She is responsible for the discovery of young and inexperienced Paul. She likes his songs and doesn't hesitate in stealing one to include in her show. Never did the technicolor loved anyone as it loved Rita Hayworth! She was a beautiful woman who lights up the screen any time we see her.

Victor Mature, as Paul, plays an unworldly Paul Dresser. He is a country boy and it shows. It is through his association with Sally that he gets the kind of sophistication he never had.

In minor roles James Gleason, as Paul's agent is excellent. This character actor graces with his presence dozens of films where he is always in the background. The great Phil Silvers appears briefly in a couple of key scenes. He was a talented actor of the stage and the screen and television that was always a welcome addition to everything he appeared in. Also, Carol Landis is seen in a small role.

See the film as a curiosity piece. The songs are tuneful, if forgettable.

"My Gal Sal" is a Hollywood biopic. And, like most biopics of the era, much of the story is fiction. However, even for a biopic, this one is mostly hooey and is nearly 90% fictional! After all, Paul Dresser's life would have been impossible to accurately portray and yet comply with the Production Code! After all, in real life, Dresser had a mistress who owned a brothel, slept with many prostitutes and later he essentially ate and drank himself to death at age 48! And, when he died he was broke...having spent everything he earned and then some! In fact, he was so broke it took years for him to be properly buried!

The story begins with Paul arguing with his father...something which was pretty accurate, as Paul and his father reportedly had almost no relationship because of this. He then makes his way as a singing at traveling medicine shows, though in real life he ALSO performed as a minstrel...though fortunately this isn't in the film.

His fortunes changed and after writing some successful songs and meeting Sally Elliott, he slowly gained fame. In real life, fame came slower, there was no Sally Elliott and he was in near constant trouble due to his own foolish choices. But in this one, he's a pretty standup guy whose biggest problem is his on again off again relationship with Elliott.

So what is to become of all this? And, is the film worth seeing? As far as whether it's worth seeing, it depends. If you accept that nearly all the story is fiction and just enjoy it for its color cinematography, nice costumes and lovely songs which were lip synched by the leads, then you'll no doubt like the film. As for me, the phoniness of the story made it hard to like...my problem probably because I used to teach history and actually like films to bear more than a passing semblance to the facts. I also didn't like the fictional relationship with Elliott for another reason...their fighting and cooing and fighting got very tiresome after a while.

Darryl Zanuck loved doing these period musicals because the music of the time had by now passed into the public domain. For My Gal Sal, Zanuck didn't have any contemporary composers write anything original for the score on this one. Those original songs are what win Academy Awards as he would prove the following year with You'll Never Know.

My Gal Sal which along with On The Banks Of The Wabash was the most popular song that Paul Dresser ever wrote serves also as the title of this musical biography of Dresser. Paul originally named Dreiser was the oldest of nine children and the youngest was famed novelist Theodore Dreiser and Dreiser wrote a short essay in tribute to his older brother which was the basis for this film. Young Theodore only appears as a child at the beginning of the film.

But the title role is fictional musical comedy star Sally Elliott who is played by Rita Hayworth. She's got publisher John Sutton panting after her, but she's got this love/hate thing going on with Victor Mature as Dresser. The plot for Sutton must have seemed familiar, it's the same one that 20th Century Fox used in A Yank In The RAF where Sutton was in the same position as in this film only with Tyrone Power and Betty Grable.

If this were being made today we would get the real story which was that Paul Dresser was a man of large frame and large appetites. The 'Sal" he wrote this song for was in real life a bordello madame of a certain house that he favored and occasionally took aspiring novelist Theodore in for a quickie. He was also a man close to 300 pounds and the guy who could have played him for real at the time was on the 20th Century lot and that was Laird Cregar.

But Mature and Hayworth were just coming into their own and Zanuck got full use of them. Mature was his studio's property, but Rita was on loan from Columbia where Harry Cohn was starting to realize what a great find Hayworth was. Zanuck was developing his star with three films, this one, Blood And Sand and Tales Of Manhattan. They both looked real good and sang real good with dubbed voices.

A lot of period music, costuming, and sets is what My Gal Sal gets its best marks for. In fact the film won an Oscar for Best Art&Set Design. Rita looked and danced divinely even using someone else's voice as she always did.

It's not the best film of this type that Fox ever did, but if your taste does run into period musicals than you can't go wrong with My Gal Sal.