Gene Kelly Dances With His Alter Ego (Clip) | Cover Girl (1944) | TCM Mad About Musicals

A lavish Technicolor musical with a theatrical background, COVER GIRL (’44) was a showcase for Columbia's top star, Rita Hayworth. That it became much more than that is due to the chemistry between Hayworth and co-star Gene Kelly, the innovative choreography of Kelly and Stanley Donen, and the musical score by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, which yielded at least one standard, and several other very good songs. As Tony Thomas writes in The Films of Gene Kelly, "In the history of the Hollywood musical Cover Girl marks a major turning point, a transitional point at which the long-familiar concept of the movie musical as a string of songs strung together by a skimpy plot gave way to a broader concept in which the musical sequences would form a part of the plot."

Most of the musical numbers in COVER GIRL were used to advance the plot. In "Make Way for Tomorrow," Kelly, Hayworth, and Phil Silvers express cheery optimism about the future as they cavort through a late-night Brooklyn street. "Long Ago and Far Away," set in the club after hours, expresses the couple's romantic longing through Kern and Gershwin's gorgeous song. The title song is a splashy production number featuring more than a dozen real-life cover girls. Jinx Falkenburg, the supermodel of the era, also has a small role in the film, as does model/actress/beauty consultant Anita Colby.

But the most spectacular moment in the film is the "Alter Ego" number, a psychological drama in dance, with Kelly arguing and dancing with his inner self. The number was shot twice, with a fixed-head camera, and Donen standing next to it, calling out the timings for the cameraman. "It was the most difficult thing I've ever done, a technical torture," Kelly later recalled.

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Gene Kelly Dances With His Alter Ego (Clip) | Cover Girl (1944) | TCM Mad About Musicals
   • Gene Kelly Dances With His Alter Ego (Clip...  

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