Tuesday, January 10, 2012

These Glamour Girls (1939)

File:These glamour girls poster.jpg

I seriously hate girls. The worse kind of girls who walk around like the whole world is theirs and that they can walk all over people. Those are the kind of girls who have never had to work a day in their lives and do not appreciate anything because whatever they want is handed to them. They are the girls who have no obstacles in their lives and when one comes along they are the nastiest, most vile creatures on the face of the earth. Why girls have to torture and be bitches to one another boggles my mind. I am a girl who is never jealous of another girl and I work my ass off for everything. I would not want it any other way I am proud of the way my life is.
            I do not usually like films like These Glamour Girls because they show girls/women being awful to each other and being so cruel to someone who does not run in their circles nor has a lot of money. The girl who is outside the circle is being treated cruelly; to me it is unjust. But I found myself really liking Lana Turner’s character and that made the film more bearable.
            Phil Griswold (Lew Ayres) is a college boy at the fictional Kingsford College who has had life handed to him. His father has a load of money so all he has to worry about is partying and his social status. He and two of his college buddies go to NYC for the weekend. They go to a place where dances with women are a few cents each. They go into the dance hall plastered and cause some trouble. Phil dances with a beautiful girl named Jane Thomas (Lana Turner).
            After Phil gets kicked out of the hall he and Jane share a taxi. On the ride back to her place he asks her to come to Kingsford’s infamous house party. All the girls of upper society are looking forward to it they all have their dates with the college boys so their lives are set for the year. Jane is thrilled and tells Phil she will be there. The only problem is Phil has already asked a girl who he has known for years to go to the house party.
            That weekend Jane shows up at Kingsford and Phil does not remember meeting her for a moment. When he remembers he tells Jane it was a mistake that he was drunk when he asked her. She wants to go home but he tells her to stay he will make up for it. Instead of spending the night with his girlfriend Phil spends it with Jane (his girlfriend does not mind one bit she has another flame). The two have a fabulous time. One of the evil queen bees lets it be known her information that she knows Jane is a taxi dancer. Jane confidently but with tears forming says yes she is a taxi dancer and dances with her are ten cents. After that she is the hit of the whole night.
            The next day the social girls are all jealous that Jane was the hit of the night. They get their claws out and dig in deep.
            It is a shame that there were/are women like this who all they care about is their social status and money. The only reason Phil ends up with Jane is because his father has been charged in a fraud scheme within his company. He now has no social standing so he gets with the girl from Kansas with no social standing… asshole. The girls were after the college boys because they knew their families had money. I felt terrible for this one character Betty who was older than most of the girls and had been attending the house parties for the past five years and never found a boyfriend. She is like one of those ladies today who thinks she is twenty years old and looks really pathetic but in reality this girl was probably like twenty-four and these girls were looking at her like she was an old maid (shit, I am twenty-four with no boyfriend, a BA degree in Art History that is useless, and I work as a hostess making less than minimum wage… what does this make me?). In the end the girls’ cruelness and the rejection from one of the boys she spends the weekend makes her commit suicide. Girls, man, they really are killer.
            Jane Hall, who wrote the story the film is based on, spent her teens going up and down the east coast to parties like this where she was with snotty society girls. Hall found great inspiration she created a great story even if it is annoying at times to show how cruel society could be which is the point. She wrote with a great wit and a great pace.
            Before this I had never seen Lana Turner in a film. I really liked her I thought she was adorable as Jane. She was not over dramatic or commanded pity, she was a tough girl who knew where she came from and was not a shamed about that. Lew Ayres was so charming and cute. He was thirty when he made this film (Turner was eighteen!!) so he was a little too old to be playing a college boy, you can kind of see that if you look hard enough. The rest of the cast alright mostly because hated their characters. It seems like MGM needed as many girls as possible so they just picked from their large stock of background actresses as well as actors. Turner and Ayres are the only really known names in the film (or the ones I know anyway).
            These Glamour Girls is not a film I would immediately suggest watching. It was alright. I got pissed off at the girls which distracted me from the rest of the film. Lana Turner was adorable and very good so I got something out of it at least. 

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