Prismark10 Dorothy Arzner one of the few female directors of the era injects a feminist subtext at the conclusion of this rather formulaic movie. I think she was also lucky to get around the censor with some of the cheeky and revealing stage routines.The film is about a troupe of dancers struggling in the depression. Bubbles (Lucille Ball) is sultry and sexy, a wow in the burlesque scene. Judy (Maureen O'Hara) aspires to be a serious dancer, a ballerina but ends up being Bubbles stooge in her stage show suffering humiliation each night as the audience jeer at her classical dance routine.Both become interested in wealthy playboy Jimmy (Louis Hayward) who is going through a divorce and who once helped Judy out when they were left stranded with no money in a police raid. Bubbles wants his money, Judy prefers his personality even though Jimmy likes a drink.The films sparkles with Ball being brassy and sexy, O'Hara striving to be independent, sensitive and striving to succeed as an artist. Both end up being vindictive with each other as they get involved in a cat fight as both desire Jimmy. Ralph Bellamy plays a Broadway choreographer who also gets interested in Judy.It is not a plausible film, I can see why Bubbles would become a hit with the revue audience but I can also understand them booing Judy's ballet routine. The film is rather clichéd and the male characters seem to be too thinly drawn.

bkoganbing Dance Girl Dance tells the story of two redheaded dancers in their salad days. One is Lucille Ball who makes it to the top in burlesque. The other is Maureen O'Hara who has the ambitions and the talent, but not the drive to succeed in classical ballet. She acts as a stooge/foil for Lucy's burlesque act and takes the money as well as the audience jibes that come with it.Both of them pique the interest of Louis Hayward a soon to be divorced playboy from Virginia Field. In addition even though O'Hara chickened out of the audition, ballet company head Ralph Bellamy thinks she has that something which will make her succeed in ballet.All these lives are tangled up with each other, but the focus is on the rivalry between Lucy and Maureen. It's friendly at times and not so friendly at others. It gets real nasty when the two have a knock down drag out brawl on stage. The customers at the burlesque sure got their money's worth that night, all these two needed was a pit of mud.In her memoirs Maureen O'Hara had nothing but kind words to say for Lucille Ball whom she got to be great friends with. She also said that by dint of her training as a Goldwyn Girl, Lucy had quite a head start on her in the dance department. O'Hara recalled the shoot as exhausting but she was proud of the finished product. As well she should have been.Lucy also met her leading man from her next scheduled picture Too Many Girls and fell in love with him. That would be Desi Arnaz and we all know where that romance went.O'Hara also enjoyed working for Dorothy Arzner and felt that Arzner brought a special dimension to what is a 'woman's picture' since it's about the friendship between two women. In any event Dance Girl Dance is a work anyone associated with it can be proud of.

Ted Amidst the boy's club of classical Hollywood cinema, Dorothy Arzner's Dance, Girl, Dance is notable as a rare female vision. While the film's behind-the-scenes-at-the-girly-show subject matter might have been sensationalized in other hands--"NOT SUITABLE FOR GENERAL EXHIBITION" brags the poster--Arzner unceremoniously mutes the male gaze throughout: rather than command her camera to linger leeringly on the female form, she chooses to communicate her dancers' eroticism through,for example, an unmoving shot of a man's eyeballs.The film's characters are faced with two modes of femininity to embrace, neither particularly appealing: Lucille Ball's Bubbles exploits her sexuality so that she might latch on to--and this is a direct quote, and I s*** you not--a "great big capitalist;" Maureen O'Hara's Judy maintains a healthy self-respect and work ethic to absolutely no avail.Dance, Girl, Dance will be entertaining to contemporary audiences for its antiquated weirdnesses-- Louis Hayward in particular is delightfully insane as Mr. Harris, completely derailing the movie every time he's on screen--but the movie's real power is in its harrowingly cynical finale: our protagonist is literally forced into a chair and told not to think by a patriarchal businessmen, and through the least convincing laughter I've ever seen on screen, Judy laments how easy her life could have been had she subjugated herself sooner. I don't know if Arzner was trying to make a statement on the impossibility of maintaining a strong female identity in male-dominated culture, but that is certainly what she did. -TK 9/2/10

Boba_Fett1138 This is a real typical early '40's musical, that only this time isn't focusing on signing but dancing. Not that it makes much difference to the story though and the movie progresses just in the same manner as you would expect from a genre movie such as this one. Not that this makes the movie a bad one but it of course also doesn't exactly make this an original one either.Of course nothing really happens as a surprise within this movie but I guess that is what makes this movie also perfectly enjoyable and good to watch, for the genre fans in particular. It however can't be really seen as the best movie within its genre, fore it has some problems.One problem of the movie are its characters. There are some good actors within the movie but due to the writing, most characters feel very messy within the movie. You also just don't really start to care about any of them, also since Maureen O'Hara, who plays the movie's main lead, plays her character far too naive and friendly. You would almost cheer for the more 'bitchy' part played by Lucille Ball who does a surprising much better job.Making it in the big town as a ballerina dancer in my book also isn't already the most compelling or interesting concept to start off with. Combine with this all the usual formulaic ingredients and you have a very average movie in basically every regard.Yet it's a perfectly watchable movie, perhaps because of the very reason that you already know what is going to happen all in this movie. After all, more important thing of course also remains not what is going to happen but how its going to happen. In that regard this movie simply does not fail, for it brings some good quality entertainment that is brought well to the screen by female director Dorothy Arzner and acted out well by most of its principal cast members.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/