The Heartbreaking Realism of 1944's Wartime Musical 'Cover Girl'
'Cover Girl' is a wartime musical tragedy that offers unexpected emotional intensity and exploration of inner lives
At the end of 1942’s For Me and My Gal — a Busby Berkeley musical starring Judy Garland released during World War II and based loosely on the drafting of one of the World War I vaudeville pair Harry Palmer (Gene Kelly) and Jo Hayden (Garland) — after its tear-filled happy ending and an MGM credits card saying “The end,” another credits card appears. Centering the illustrated statue of a gun-bearing soldier standing proud against a background of thick clouds, beneath heavenly, stark, art-deco shafts of sunlight, and flanked by warplanes and mighty and recognizable American buildings, the card exclaims: “America needs your money. Buy war bonds and stamps at this theater.” This is a card that abides regardless of whether you watch For Me and My Gal on DVD, off iTunes, or elsewhere — it’s baked into the film. Cards such as these were fairly common during the war, as they served to remind American theater-goers to put money toward their country’s war efforts.
During their days, most Americans were already putting their labor, of various forms, toward supporting the war from home base. When night rolled around, civilians could choose to spend their leisure hours at the movies, ostensibly not a war-related activity. At the theater, however, most audiences had to choose between dramas sentimentally covering the realities of the war (such as the didactically melodramatic Mrs. Miniver or the saccharinely romantic Casablanca), or, if the somber subject matter of these didn’t portend enough respite, wartime musicals such as Anchors Aweigh or Pin Up Girl. These latter films would, through their jauntiness and stalwart messaging, fortify the public in positive and ultimately lighthearted ways, through their easy and straightforward morality, and reaffirm in viewers the need to continue working toward the collective effort of winning the war.
Oftentimes these wartime musicals carried strong patriotic themes, such as For Me and My Gal, whose young and slightly self-serving Harry Palmer chooses the cowardly route of shirking the draft by injuring his hand. Ultimately, by witnessing the country-serving and morale boosting efforts of Jo Hayden, Harry comes to realize the error of his ways and thereby earns himself a happy ending. These films worked in slightly propagandist — always grinning in their loyalty to the state — ways to show viewers (especially those young) the lonely and lowly consequences of not supporting your country, reaffirming and vivifying on a nightly basis collective nationalistic sentiment. And if they could remind Americans to buy bonds while fortifying collective sentiment in terms of labor and effort (showing people that it’s okay if they feel the strain of their work, that it’s for a good cause ultimately, that even celebrities are working to support the troops!; or that their rationing and refraining from too much enjoyment and leisure will pay off), then that was always a plus. Musicals about sailors coming to shore for a short period of time served to assure their families that they were well, while for soldiers and sailors these musicals offered much-needed escapism from the brutalities of war.
Many of these musicals are very morally black and white (and therefore easily digestible), even as they carry the more serious, biographic tone of For Me and My Gal; even as they are uber lighthearted and flippant in their subject matter, like Anchors Aweigh, which concerns itself with how sailors entertain themselves while on temporary leave. Both types of musicals still underscore the ultimate nobility of serving your country. World War II saw many such broad-strokes musicals, dealing not in complex, lofty, philosophical arguments, but in straightforwardly patriotic and positive messaging (sprinkled in turn with simple ideas of love and loss), which could be espoused regardless of class or race or gender. These films worked to corral civilians on the same page about war efforts (about putting labor and money in the “right” channels), so civilians could do everything in their power to support the troops and their country, while sowing unease in those who were not doing enough for America in its time of need — all during civilians’ leisure time. This was a facet of Hollywood’s part in the war effort.
It is in this cultural milieu, in this patriotic musical tradition, that 1944’s ostensibly larger-than-life Cover Girl is released to much adoration and acclaim. Directed by Charles Vidor (Gilda) in name and starring Gene Kelly (on loan from MGM to Columbia) and Rita Hayworth, Cover Girl is a deeply intriguing musical, so much so one wonders, from the comfort of present day, how it could have been released during the war, in brilliant Technicolor to boot. At a time when most musicals (see Yankee Doodle Dandy and its red-white-and-blue, over the top marketing) dealing with the fact of war focused on how to optimistically rally round audiences, Cover Girl, for all the glamor contained in its name and the glimmer of its costumes and vibrancy, is a deeply sober, starkly realistic, down-to-earth musical that is undergirded by a deep sense of uncertainty and constrained emotion. Nothing like the melodramatic wartime pictures of the time that exclaim their passions through song, whose black-and-white moral values (that is, support for war is noble, any hesitation or sadness thereunto is as good as defection) can be felt before one even engages with the films, Cover Girl is rather almost shy in the interpersonal relationships it depicts, depicting self-conscious characters in whose lives the war is an upsetting and almost intrusive reality. Ultimately, this is the most un-wartime musical to have been produced by the era, and one that, as it breaks our hearts, is also eerily prescient for its utilization of Kelly and Hayworth.
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