Les Girls

The musical "Les Girls" (1957) is curious, I suggest for many reasons. It has three leading ladies, only a few very good musical numbers and a plot that is heavy on satirical comedy, with four distinct sections. It is also embedded within a trial about libel and takes part very largely indoors; yet it is arguably filled with clear 'action' from start to finish. John Patrick's screenplay I find clever and the dialog perhaps very good. Vera Casparay's story gave us three different versions of mostly the same events, with a subtle shift forward in time each time. Director George Cukor used shots from heights and clever low angles to give an extra dimension to what otherwise might have been boring indoor shots (in less-capable hands). The film produced by Saul Chaplin and Sol Siegel looks lovely in Technicolor and seems sumptuous as well as convincing throughout, I suggest. The cinematography by Robert Surtees, acting as director of photography, the vivid art direction by Gene Allen and William A. Horning and the set decorations by Richard Pefferle and the great Edwin Willis complement the well-matched art direction very well indeed, in my opinion. Among the film's musical numbers, "Ca C'est L'Amour", "You're Too Too" and the rope ballet seemed the most memorable moments to me. Orry-Kelly's wardrobe and costumes and the musical department's contributions stand out; Jack Cole and Alex Romero are credited with the choreography, no doubt with ideas from the star Gene Kelly. In featured roles, Jacques Bergerac, Henry Daniell as the judge, and Leslie Phillips and Patrick MacNee all make very strong impressions with little to work with. The three ladies in the act "Barry Nichols and Les Girls", are Kay Kendall, Taina Elg and Mitzi Gaynor. Kendall deserves an Oscar for her range of comedy and dramatic moments in the film, by my standards; Mitzi Gaynor is a good dancer and delivers both a decent characterization and some fine one-liners without being vocally strong. Taina Elg is the surprise--by turns charming, mischievous and intelligent; her accent perhaps harmed her opportunity to play more comedies within a shrinking 50's movie industry. Kelly is believable throughout and perhaps has never danced better. This film that retails the interplay among four interesting people on "the road" in Europe in the 1950s is undoubtedly both beautifully directed and professionally mounted. It has, I say as a writer, discreet charm, some nice comedic and emotional moments and a pace that director Cukor and the cast never allow to falter. It deserves more credit than it has ever been given, and I believe awards for some of its finest achievers' work exhibited herein.

Cole Porter's final film score and next to last music written for any media is Les Girls. The same team producer Sol Seigal and writer John Patrick who produced and wrote the adaption of The Philadelphi Story for High Society worked with Porter again and this time George Cukor was directing. It's a good film, but I've got the feeling that it could have been a whole lot better.

One of the criticisms that Porter used to get annoyed with was the perennial 'it isn't up to Cole Porter's standard' and then you'd look in the score and see a lot of classics. Can-Can is the best example of that. But in the case of Les Girls Porter admitted this to be true. According to the George Eells biography of Porter, he was starting to suffer the decline in health that would eventually end his life in 1964. He did have surgery to bypass an ulcer and was not feeling up to par.

Still the numbers are mostly for a vaudeville act, Barry Nichols and Les Girls so they're serviceable to a bright Rashomon like plot. The members of the act are Gene Kelly and the girls are Mitzi Gaynor, Taina Elg, and Kay Kendall. Kay's written a memoir that includes an alleged suicide attempt by Elg and she's suing her in an English court. As we get testimony from Elg, Kendall, and Kelly, they all give out with different versions. It's also clear he had his fling with all of them at one time despite his alleged no fraternization policy.

Elg has the best ballad of the score, Ca C'est L'Amour which sounds like something that might have been written for Can-Can and discarded. Cole Porter discards are better than a lot of composer's best efforts. The sparkling Kay Kendall was never shown to better advantage on the screen than with You're Just Too Too in a duet with Kelly. And Cole Porter wickedly satirizes Marlon Brando and The Wild One in Why Am I So Gone About That Gal with Kelly and Mitzi Gaynor.

In addition to this being Cole Porter's last film score, this film also marks Gene Kelly's last full blown musical. He did do other musical numbers in films like What A Way To Go and Young Girls From Rochefort and Xanadu, but this was the last musical he did. They were getting way too expensive to make, something Kelly learned from behind the camera when he directed Hello Dolly.

Even with a score that Cole Porter himself wasn't thrilled with, Les Girls is still a fresh bit of film making. And since it's original to the screen, the Porter wit is not edited severely. All in all four great musical performers, three of them Les Girls.

On the one hand, it has Gene Kelly and direction by George Cukor and the smart, smooth music of Cole Porter. But the structure of the plot is a bit bumpy, and most of this bumpiness stems from the RASHOMON-like tale starting, stopping, and starting again over two hours. A lot of people seem to think that the Porter score was sub-par; I wholeheartedly disagree. An especially lovely sequence is a rowboat scene between Kelly and Taina Elg which segues into the love song "Ca C'est L'amour." Also clever are the burlesque turn of "Ladies In Waiting" and the vaudeville-like "You're Just Too, Too" which pairs Kelly with the rapturous Kay Kendall. Kendall is, in many ways, the real star of LG with her deft comedy (drunkenly singing opera for five straight minutes!) and her cool, elegant beauty. Knowing that she died shortly after completing this film- and so young- makes one miss her charms all the more and also wish that the film had a larger following. (It's particularly enigmatic nowadays when compared to Kelly's bigger and better known hits: 'Singin' In The Rain,' 'An American In Paris,' 'Anchors Aweigh,' etc.) Still, Mitzi Gaynor is a dish, dancing with Kelly in a sexy black dress (in a weird Marlon-Brando-a'la-THE-WILD-ONE-send up). Thank goodness it's on widescreen DVD where it belongs.

I love classic films, but I'm not one for musicals. I like melodramas. With "Les Girls", however, I have to make an exception. This is fun, colorful, comic-musical in which Kay Kendall plays Lady Wren, former member of a European dance troupe, who writes a book exposing the backstage "truths" and scandals. Along comes Taina Elg, also a former member of that troupe, suing Lady Wren for defamation of character. A trial ensues in which we get flashbacks, giving the various points-of-view of how things really happened. Cute and fun from the opening moments of plantiff and defendant entering the courtroom to the flashbacks showcasing Kendall's brilliant comedic abilities and the oft-referred to gin in the perfume bottle sequence. This is truly a good show and Gene Kelly's great too.

There is a unique kind of elegance in Cukor's way to see the world. An elegance that is utterly personal. Witty, warm, enchanting. It could disguise, transform and magnify the smallest, thinnest trifle. I remember feeling my cheeks kind of numb after the film was over, not from laughing but from smiling all the way through. Cukor's reputation as a women's director was no myth. Here, the glorious Kay Kendall, in a character written with a tired left hand, shines all the same because Cukor knew and understood what made her so irresistible. She was, in the history of the movies, like a comet that flashed before us dazzling us and disappearing very fast but leaving behind a unique brand of magic. In "Les Girls" she even dances with Gene Kelly, wears hats and sun glasses like no one ever had before or since. She's an impossibly perfect combination of Allison Janney and Greta Garbo. This is a film that more often than not, people forget to remember. I think it's time to correct that. Rent it or buy it, switch on the weather channel, select a rainy winter Sunday, invite a bunch of friends and have a ball.