christopher-underwood Its sentimental and maudlin, which I suppose is par for the course for a wartime Hollywood musical but it is also lacking decent songs. Whilst the dancing is okay it is such a shame that Rita Hayworth has so much make-up applied that she looks well beyond her 26 years. Maybe its something of the times though because Gene Kelly look way beyond his 32 years as well. In fact he looks positively unwell and although he is supposed to be sad and unhappy that things are not going his way, he really does look shattered and prompted to overact. Phil Silvers, who i thought would be embarrassing is really good, bit over the top but he convinces and Hayworth too, even in her 'cockney' song does pretty well. The costumes and the technicolor are wonderful and the 'cover girl' sequence towards the end featuring actual cover girls of the day is great. There is also an impressive routine where Hayworth comes down a big blue spiral structure in a gold dress and is caught by a group of guys. Its just that so much of this is really not very good and with a seeming out of sorts Kelly at the centre, the film has to suffer.

Shirley Elizabeth Strang I have seen this movie a few times always with pleasure.Rita Haworth & Gene Kelly were always entertaining. Also talking about gorgeous Rita has kindled a memory about my 3rd cousin Constance Worth (not her real name)who also appeared with Rita Haworth in the movie Angels Over Broadway. She was born in Sydney Enid Joyce Howarth known in Australia as Joycelyn Howarth the youngest of 3 daughters & her mother Mary Ellen Dumbrell married a Banker named Moffatt Howarth. This girl was the first Australian actress to find stardom in Hollywood.Our family is proud to be related.

Robert J. Maxwell I know it has Gene Kelly in it. I know it has Rita Hayworth in it. I know Phil Silvers provides comic relief and Jerome Kern wrote the songs and Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics, but I've tried several times to get my appreciative apparatus wrapped around this movie and can't do it.Kern has provided a terrific, soaring tune, "Long Ago and Far Away," which doesn't involve a dance, and the others are without distinction. I mean, the guy composed like nobody else. For "Roberta" he wrote, among other tunes, "Dearly Beloved" and "I'm Old Fashioned", icons in the Great American Songbook. Except for "Long Ago and Far Away," there's nothing like that here.Gene Kelly oozes an easy-going charm but his athletic dancing here still looks like it came out of vaudeville, his arms held out at an awkward angle. He would improve quantumly over the next few years. Rita Hayworth is gorgeous but is stuck in a corny part in a corny plot.Corniness, in the sense of reflecting old-fashioned values, isn't bad per se. I don't think there's anything more juvenile than the story behind "On The Town." But the book means a lot. If the story behind the numbers isn't engaging, it's difficult for the numbers to succeed. Not "impossible" -- look at Fred and Ginger's best -- but difficult.Unquestionably, one of the reasons for the evidently undying popularity of "Singin' In The Rain" is that it's funny as hell, quite aside from the numbers themselves -- which are also light-hearted and well integrated into the plot. "Singin' In The Rain" makes a viewer feel HAPPY in a way that this film simply doesn't. Who wants to see unhappy singers and dancers? I'll tell you who wants to watch unhappy musicals. Opera fans, that's who! There's not a somber moment in "Singin' In The Rain", no serious conflict at all. The more somber a musical film gets, the less entertaining it is. "An American in Paris" was much more ambitious but memorable mostly for its expensive sets. Then there is the dismal "It's Always Fair Weather." I'd like to recommend this because nobody is better at projecting a kind of flamboyant joy than Gene Kelly. That smile belongs in a toothpaste commercial. But, really, "Cover Girl" isn't much more than routine.

Richard Burin Cover Girl (Charles Vidor, 1944) is worth it for the dancing - much of it choreographed by co-star Gene Kelly, in just his fourth musical. Rita Hayworth is a stage-star who spies a path to the big-time via a magazine beauty competition. Though she gets the gig, thanks to the sentimentality of a big shot who once dated her grandmother, it puts a strain on her relationship with boyfriend and former boss Kelly. That hackneyed but involving plot, which borrows from the Jessie Matthews musical Evergreen, is a springboard for some very interesting routines. The lovely Make Way for Tomorrow sees Hayworth, Kelly and comic foil Phil Silvers dashing around a vast set, arm-in-arm, while the ebullient Put Me to the Test is an energetic stage-set number teaming Gene with a succession of partners. The absolute highlight is Kelly's Alter-Ego Dance, in which he hoofs opposite a transparent version of himself. Until you've seen the screen's second greatest dancer leap over his own head, you haven't really lived. Elsewhere, the staging is just peculiar. During the title number, Hayworth descends the biggest staircase this side of The Great Ziegfeld. When she gets to the bottom, she just sort of waves her arms around a bit. I take it Kelly didn't devise that dance. Poor John, dubbed by Martha Mears, as were all Hayworth's numbers, features the oddest (Cockney?!) accent I've ever heard. The choreography and costumes are almost as weird.Cover Girl is too spotty and muddled to be ranked with the best musicals of the period, but it's a valuable snapshot of one of cinema's greatest creative forces at an important stage in his career. In the film's key numbers, Kelly's sense of ambition is already much in evidence - though it was only once he was given bigger budgets and more significant talents to work with that he really came into his own. Even so, he reportedly cited the Alter-Ego Dance as the most difficult routine he'd ever crafted, and it is a phenomenal achievement*. Hayworth, who Fred Astaire regarded as the best of his own partners, is good value in the lead, and displays a depth of emotion that transcends the slightly stale script, while Phil Silvers and especially Eve Arden provide exemplary comic support. Silvers - later TV's Sgt Ernie Bilko, of course - even does a couple of song-and-dance bits.*Trivia note: Fred Astaire would offer his own variation on the routine two years later - Puttin' on the Ritz - backed by no fewer than nine Astaires. The way Kelly and Astaire pushed one another to ever greater heights during this period is exhilarating.