MGM did Lana Turner wrong in a big way. Early in her career she starred in three fine comedies — Dancing Co-Ed, These Glamour Girls, and Two Girls on Broadway — and it’s obvious that she could have been a contender as a comedienne, maybe even a successor to Carole Lombard. Instead, she became the world’s Hot Number, more desirable than Venus, and her people stopped coaching her acting. Practically nobody remembers these great early comedies, which fit any definition of neglected gems.
In later years, Turner was considered a wooden, soulless actress — and if that’s true (I haven’t seen many of her “mature” films) it may be because she was given sorry vehicles in which she just had to look gorgeous and be bad. I’ve complained about her role in Honky Tonk where she plays across from Clark Gable, who plays like he’s her dirty uncle. I’ve complained that comedies with glamorous stars often don’t work because the beauty gets in the way. (This is mainly true for female stars, but in the case of Gable, Robert Taylor, or Tyrone Power it’s true for men, too.) But in these early comedies Turner is an excellent comedienne. Her looks don’t stifle the action, they propel it. She had no training in acting or dancing, but it’s obvious she was a quick study. It’s said that her specialty was playing roles of women with powerfully conflicting impulses, quickly shifting from sincere affection to conniving mistrust, always putting her men off balance. That sounds cliché for noir and melodrama, but it’s iffy for comedy. In these early MGM comedies she makes exactly that work. Her on-a-dime changes from apparent cluelessness to penetrating intelligence are all convincing. And she does it with her glances, her carriage, and for me most impressively, her words. This fashion plate delivers screwball patter with the best of them. I think a lot of credit has to be given to the director of all three of these early film, S. Sylvan Simon, a director I know almost nothing about. But maybe even more to Mervyn LeRoy, a great comic director, who was Turner’s mentor and protector in her early years.
I’m really fond of Dancing Co-Ed. It’s always advertised as an Artie Shaw band flick, promising Turner’s dancing. Actually, we get precious little of both. And yet the non-musical parts are so good, you actually forget for long stretches that’s it’s supposed to be a musical. The script is sharp, fast, and clever. It’s a kind of non-backstage musical, combining the contemporary fad of college swing band comedies and the older vaudeville show plots. Peggy (Lana), who dances in a vaudeville review with her Pops (Leon Errol), has been promised a role in a Hollywood movie, but the lead actress becomes unexpectedly pregnant and it looks like the film will be cancelled. The studio fixer, Joe Drews (in a great performance by Roscoe Karns), devises a plan: the studio will sponsor a nationwide contest to find a fresh new dancer among college co-eds; the studio head will get to pick the winner. But Joe wants to make sure they get it right, so he’ll plant Peggy in a college (“Midwest State” again, like in The Male Animal), and make sure she’s the one who’s chosen. I love the speed and verbal timing of this scene — you expect it from Karns, but Turner has got chops, too. (By the way, Turner was 19 when the film was released.)
The male star of the prospective movie (which we never do see being made) has to be persuaded that Peggy has the chops to be his partner, so we’re treated to short and sweet display of Turner’s hoofing.
The plot proceeds as planned. Peggy is enrolled at State, accompanied by Joe’s trusty, brainy secretary Eve, who will take care of Peggy’s homework and grades. The college scenes are suprisingly good (a rarity in college comedies of the time). Monty Wooley plays an old-school literature prof highly amused at his students’ eccentricities. Note the blackboard in this shot — he’s ready to conduct a scansion lecture on Sapphic and Alcaic meters. Go, old guy!
The contest is announced, and that Artie Shaw — the Elvis of swing bandleaders — will play the music for it. (Shaw was married many times to Hollywood stars. He married Turner a few months after meeting her during the shoot of the film. They were divorced a few months after that. He consoled himself by marrying Ava Gardner next.) The hitch is that the student newspaper’s editor, Pug (Richard Carlson), is so cynical that he suspects the studio will plant a ringer, just as they do with football players. Anxious about being found out, Peggy devises a plan to become Pug’s “Watson,” since Sherlock never suspects Watson. (There are lots of moments like this in the script, when it becomes clear that Peggy is “always thinking,” as she puts it, and that she’s much quicker than anyone around her, except Joe.) The plot uses Turner’s seductiveness for great comic effect — she’s a seductress alright, but for a good cause.
Here’s an example of using glamorous beauty not to mesmerize the audience, but to tell a funny story.
Pug falls for the idea, and takes Peggy on as a “Cub” reporter. He publishes an article about his suspicions, which comes to Joe’s attention; but he also entrusts the final investigation to Peggy, who follows up by writing an article that clears everyone, even though she’s now feeling sympathy for all the girls who are sincerely hoping for the break that she has been planted to get. One of my favorite scenes is the moment when Joe discovers that Peggy has planted herself in the newspaper — so now she’s a double potato.
Meanwhile, Pug and Peggy have upset the college president by photographing “real life” activities on campus — i.e., necking and drinking. They’re in danger of suspension, and the president wants to call their fathers in for a consultation. Pug’s father is too busy, and Peggy can’t reveal that her father is a vaudeville clown or she’ll blow the whole cover. She has made up a story that her father is in Russia as a secret counselor to the US president, but now she needs a way out. She devises a plan of hiring fake fathers for both Pug and herself for the meeting with the Prez, and her fake father will be played by her real father. The explanation scene would be good enough for Sturges.
The entire “conference with the fathers” scene is full of fine little surprises and twists, capped off by Pops saving the situation by publicly revealing the hoax — candidly confessing that he’s not Peggy’s father (while of course he is). That’s three comic levels all at once.
Saved from expulsion, Peggy feels her romance with Pug is strong enough for her to reveal the truth to him. He takes it hard, but eventually appears reconciled. But only appears. Just hours before Peggy is scheduled to appear on stage at the contest, Pug has her kidnapped and removed to a remote cabin owned by a professor. The story could have ended already, but this loony late-hour digression has Pug wrapping Peggy in a big oil-cloth tablecloth to protect her from driving rain in his topless automobile, racing to get her to the contest before it ends. It’s a pure Lombard moment, that the drop-dead gorgeous Turner plays through a hole in the tablecloth:
In a final twist, Peggy gets to dance, but the studio boss prefers Eve, who has done an elegant little dance to fill the time as they wait for Peggy to arrive. Peggy’s dance is sweet and fine — but it’s not what the studio wants.
The happy ending is completely surprising — and in retrospect the film has been preparing us for it because there have been so many twists along the way. Eve gets a Hollywood contract (i.e., the smart gal who doesn’t dance gets the dance gig), Peggy goes back to the stage with Pops where she wanted to be all along, and Pug gets his girl.
Artie Shaw was a selling point for the film. His name appears prominently on all the p.r. material. But there are only a couple of extended tunes by his band, and they’re not the greatest examples of his style. Here’s the best one. (That’s a young Buddy Rich on drums, btw.)
