Cover Girl

Starring:Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman, Phil Silvers, Jinx Falkenburg, Leslie Brooks (II), Eve Arden, Otto Kruger, Jess Barker, Anita Colby, Curt Bois, Jean Colleran, Francine Counihan, Helen Mueller, Cecilia Meagher, Betty Jane Hess, Dusty Anderson, Eileen McClory, Cornelia B. von Hessert, Karen X. Gaylord
Director: Charles Vidor
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential

Cover Girl was one of the big hits of Rita Hayworth's run as movie queen (and World War II pinup girl), a splashy musical geared to the talents of its redheaded star. Be warned: this is the kind of movie in which a single magazine cover turns an unknown dancer into the toast of her own Broadway show, virtually overnight. The corn runs high, but so do the spirits; plus, Eve Arden is around to toss in her trademark one-liners. Gene Kelly, as Hayworth's sulky choreographer and part-time boyfriend, stops the movie cold with his brilliant dance alongside his own reflection. The Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin songs are middling, except for the lovely "Long Ago and Far Away." One number presents a parade of magazine cover girls come to life (great snapshot of an era). And check out the movie's hats: a parade of insane creations, perched uncertainly on many beautiful women's heads. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

Cover Girl.......2007-05-28

single magazine cover turns unknown dancer Rusty Parker (Rita Hayworth) into a Broadway star overnight and acts as a catalyst for the love conflict between Rusty and her choreographer/part-time boyfriend Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). With splashy music, dynamic dance numbers, and the usual cheesy love declarations, Cover Girl is worth the watch for classic Hollywood fans. This film also sets the stage for Gene Kelly's famous `Alter Ego' dance which served as the inspiration for his later and even more famous solo dance and song performance of `Singing In The Rain'.

A MUSICAL THAT TELLS A LOVE STORY.......2007-05-07

THERE IS NOT MUSIC ALL THE WAY THROUGH IT IS NOT AS IF ALL LINES WERE SONGS
RITA AND GENE ARE IN LOVE SILVERMAN IS BEST FRIENDS WITH THEM BOTH AS THEY SEARCH FOR THE PEARL THE MAGIC PEARL IN SMALL BAR EACH NIGHT AFTER THE SHOW THEY ORDER CLAMS EVENTUALLY IT IS FOUND
RITA LOOKS LIKE HER GRANDMOTHER WHO A PRODUCER WAS IN LOVE WITH AND WHEN HE SEEN RITA HE JUST HAD TO HAVE HER AT ANY COST A SMALL TIME GIRL WENT FROM THAT TO THE COVER GIRL AND CHANGED HER LIFE AND HER ATTITUDE
SHE REALIZES IT WAS A MISTAKE . GENE AND SILVERMAN GO THERE OWN WAY TOGETHER THEY PREFORM FOR THE TROOPS SINCE HIS LOVE BECAME THE COVER GIRL
THIS MOVIE HAS COMEDY DANCE AND SONG AND WOW RITA BEAUTIFUL AS EVER
BUY THIS MOVIE HAS A WONDERFUL ENDING

If You Like Cheesy Technicolor Musicals, You'll Like This.......2007-05-05

I've been an avid watcher of old movies for about a year now, and I'm coming to the conclusion Technicolor musicals just aren't my cup of tea. I prefer film noir- give me dramatic, semi depressing, black and white movies anyday over movies like this. This is not to say this movie is bad, it's not, but there's nothing special about it. Entirely too long with outbursts of dance and song typical to a true musical. In musicals, people always feel the need to suddenly get up and sing about every emotion they're feeling, and I find this somewhat lackluster. The plot interested me, as I have a weakness for movies that explore the underbelly of show stardom thrust upon newcomers, but not in the cheery Technicolor fashion this film portrays. But what can I say, maybe 'Gilda' would be more my cup of tea. As for me, I'll leave the cheesy song and dance routines to someone else.

Typical plot with a true star!.......2007-04-28

You know that most movie musicals all have that same plot: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl face some huge ordeal, then they live happily ever after. However, this one stars the magnificent, beautiful, and truly talented Rita Hayworth, our 'girl', Rusty in this one. I hadn't seen any of her films, but have always been a big fan of movie musicals and actresses from that generation.
"Cover Girl" makes me want to seek out more of Rita Hayworth.

Choreographic genius (recommended).......2007-01-28

To further her career, Rusty Parker (Rita Hayworth) enters a COVER GIRL contest. Keys to unlocking certain Broadway stardom are her grace, face, and talent. Rusty's ontogenesis challenges the budding romance with nightclub owner Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). Rusty must decide between her familiar fellowship and the aristocrats who disdain them but wield control over her ambitions.

A dance number called "Alter Ego" finds a parallel in the careers of Rusty Parker and her grandmother Maribelle Hicks. In Alter Ego, Gene Kelly dances with a reflection of himself in a manner that transcends 1944 technology and, according to Kelly, is the most difficult film sequence he's ever done. I had to back it up and watch again in amazement. With the exception of this scene, most song-and-dance routines are in the appropriate on-stage setting -- no hokey dancers jumping out of unexpected places. The romantic comedy musical COVER GIRL established Kelly as a choreographer extraordinaire!

Movie quote: "I'm John Coudair, Maribelle, the only thing in your life from now on. So you might as well make the best of it."

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The good, the bad and the indifferent
Good Message, Poor Movie
True Grit With A Few Gripes
What might have been...or not.
"Everybody Hustles."

Hustle
Starring: Burt Reynolds , Catherine Deneuve , Ben Johnson , Paul Winfield , and Eileen Brennan
Director: Robert Aldrich
Manufacturer: Paramount
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0008KLVC8
Release Date: 2005-06-21

Amazon.com

Among the films that made the '70s an "American Renaissance" decade, Hustle merits a place of honor. As vigorous as the groundbreaking work of such Young Turk contemporaries as Scorsese, Spielberg, and Coppola, its distinction lies in being a throwback to the '50s glory days of its director, Robert Aldrich, when he was making corrosive, Establishment-baiting classics like Attack! and Kiss Me Deadly. The same sardonic spirit, bracing socio-political anger, and bold, hard-edged moviemaking inform this look into the soul of Los Angeles by way of a murder investigation that may not, in fact, have a murder at its core.

Steve Shagan wrote the script, and like his 1973 Save the Tiger, this movie's central character is a burnt-out case with a nostalgia for lost values: an LAPD detective (Burt Reynolds) whose spiritual/ethical touchstones are film-noir Bogart and soft-focus French movies of the '60s. He should have a girlfriend played by Catherine Deneuve--and he does, a Deneuve whose first signs of aging on screen are an evocative element of the film. Her character is a high-class courtesan whose clients include a prominent attorney (Eddie Albert); he also appears to have had some connection with a 20-year-old hooker/druggie whose corpse just washed up on a California beach. Throw in Ben Johnson as the dead girl's seething war-veteran dad, Eileen Brennan as his wife, Paul Winfield and Ernest Borgnine as Reynolds's fellow cops, and you've got one potent ensemble. Reynolds isn't equal to the task of selling some of Shagan's most florid rhetoric (probably no actor would be), but he makes an honorable stab at it. And as an urbane power-broker who can contemplate an assassination while finishing his Cobb salad, the late Eddie Albert is chilling, just chilling. --Richard T. Jameson

Description

Everybody "hustles"-especially in Los Angeles where suicides, strip joints, shootouts, porno movies, the mob and murder combine into a collage. Caught in this web of modern reality is an old fashioned detective (Reynolds). A moralist who still sees the difference between right and wrong, he can hardly reconcile himself to the ugliness of his job. By day he investigates a young girl's suicide, while at night he relaxes with a high-priced Paris call girl (Deneuve).

Customer Reviews:

The good, the bad and the indifferent.......2007-03-12

At times it's hard to know quite what to make of Hustle. There's certainly a good film in there, but there's also a bad one as well and Robert Aldrich doesn't make the two into something entirely cohesive. Joseph Biroc's photography is somewhat schizophrenic too. The police station interiors and night shots look great with a classic neo-noir look to them with their deep blacks, but some of the daytime work looks like painfully artificial TV movie stuff. Some of the editing is awkward and some of the writing so on the nose it's like someone decided to film `My First Cop Movie' while the references to Moby Dick (the film, not the book) come over as Symbolism 101, but then it delivers something good enough for you to want to file away and use yourself at a later date.

Where it scores is in its portrait of a job and a place where you can all too easily lose all sense of yourself, a side of Los Angeles the film captures remarkably well (there's a reason so many Angelinos move to different States or even countries). Burt Reynolds' cop is so desensitized to his job that he obliviously talks to the morgue staff about football scores while escorting a father to see his daughter's dead body, behavior no-one finds shocking in a place where people only count if they're `somebody.' In many ways the most impressive thing about it is its determination to avoid becoming a murder mystery: no-one, least of all Reynolds, has any interest in investigating a murder, and neither does the film. Instead it's more interested in the emotional fallout from the death and how it affects (or rather fails to affect) those around the death. It all ends in violence, naturally, albeit with the caveat that you end up paying for the sins you didn't commit rather than the ones you you did.

Good Message, Poor Movie.......2006-02-17

I like these types of movies, and saw the DVD on sale for $9, so I gave it a look. With Burt Reynolds and Catherine Deneuve being movie legends I figured what did I have to lose. Unfortunately, the movie really misses the mark and is not very good, except for the message. Slow and predictable, it reminds me of a bad Frank Sinatra's movie.

Robert Aldrich, who did a masterful job on "The Longest Yard - 1974" was the director, and he and Burt were the film's producer. The film really needed a good producer and it might have been better. However, it was great to see Deneuve in a U.S. film and the DVD quality is very good.

True Grit With A Few Gripes.......2005-08-02

Hustle recalls forlorn '70s films like Save The Tiger and Scarecrow which dealt with downbeat material in a mature, realistic manner. Which isn't to say that Hustle is a study in realistic police work. The script is contrived with stereotypical characters (The Cynical Cop, Hooker With A Heart Of Gold, etc), but the lead performances and a bleak world view make this one a cut above the usual detective drama.

What might have been...or not........2005-06-22

Those born in the Reagan years may not realize that for a brief shining moment in the late 1970s, Burt Reynolds was the most popular movie star on the planet. Just prior to that, in 1975, he made this movie, and gives a creditable, serious and even moving performance.

If he had not grown the mustache and played up the good old boy shtick and annoying high pitched laugh, he may not have been Numero Uno for those couple of years, but he might have been taken more seriously and made better movies.

Perhaps not. This is the man who was first choice to play the Jack Nicholson part in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and opted to do STROKER ACE instead.

In any event, this is a good example of gritty, bleak 1970s movie making, when mainstream Hollywood flicks could be dark and even have an unhappy ending. In 1976 ROCKY came along and changed all that.

A little dated, and a less than crisp DVD transfer, but worth checking out.

"Everybody Hustles.".......2002-07-26

One of the last 5 films by director Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly, Apache, The Dirty Dozen) and starring pre-moustache/Bandit Burt Reynolds (who also starred in Aldrich's previous film, "The Longest Yard") as Phil Gaines, a L.A. cop who would rather be living in the 1930s when life was cleaner. Ironically, he is in love with a prostitute (Catherine Deneuve). They have dreams of going away and starting a new life together, but never make it. The other side of the story concerns Gaines' case of Gloria, a teenage girl found dead on the beach and the Father refuses to believe that she committed suicide. His reckless investigation and obsession with revenge on his daughter's "killer" ends in the murder of an important, yet crooked and slimy attorney, Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert). Also co-starring is Ernest Borgnine as Santori, Gaines' boss, but he doesent quite seem on the "up & up". "Hustle" is not that bad, although it's also not spectacular. It is a pessimistic film, like a modern film noir, that in the hands of any other director or actors would probably not have had much significance. Many elements, especially the vulgar language and the drugs/porno theme (common in the 1970s) are what help this to get lost within the slew of 70s exploitation films. I would probably not have seen it if it were not for taking a film course where the focus was on the films of Robert Aldrich. As of yet, the film is not available on DVD and you're lucky if you can even rent the VHS, let alone own it. Still worth a look for fans of Aldrich, Reynolds (before "the bandit") and 70s cop or exploitation film.

Product Description

In the tradition of "My Cousin Vinny" this is one of the rarest comedies you'll ever stumble acress on DVD, impossible to find nearly anywhere in the world

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Cover Girl Models
Starring: Pat Anderson , Lindsay Bloom , Rhonda Leigh Hopkins , John Kramer , and Mary Woronov
Director: Cirio Santiago
Manufacturer: Telavista
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00078807A
Release Date: 2005-02-01

Average customer rating:

Cover Girl
A MUSICAL THAT TELLS A LOVE STORY
If You Like Cheesy Technicolor Musicals, You'll Like This
Typical plot with a true star!
Choreographic genius (recommended)

Cover Girl [Region 2]
Starring: Rita Hayworth , Gene Kelly , Lee Bowman , Phil Silvers , and Jinx Falkenburg
Director: Charles Vidor
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video