OPERA HOUSE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 33, 8 February 1941, Page 7

OPERA HOUSE

“DANCE, GIRL, DANCE.” Lucille Bali, who added some of the sparkle to “Five Came Back” when that excellent little show was doing its rounds, makes an electrifying appearance in “Dance. Girl, Dance,” the R.K.O. film now screening at the Ooera House. She makes excellent piay in an excellent part which is weil set-off by the contrast of Maureen O'Hara’s gentle, almost wistful apappearances. Judy (Maureen O’Hara) and Bubbles (Lucille Ball) are memoers of a dancing team in search of work. Judy’s lode-star is the ballet, for which she has trained hard, and to the exclusion of almost everything else but the need to make a living. Bubbles' is just as direct, but more in the short-term class—she wants a "good time,” and she wants it now, even if she has to marry some rich man to get it. In the small-time halls where the girls stand the best chance of engagement, Judy’s classic style is a* drug on the market, whereas Bubbles' slap-dash, free-and-easy burlesque is just what is wanted. She gets a job through “influence,” and makes such a success of her music-hall turn that her salary goes up and up. She does not forget Judy, however, who is overjoyed at an offer to work till she finds that it means no more than using her ballet work as a foil to the real attraction of the evening, which is Bubbles’ not too fastidious hip-wiggling across the footlights. If that were all there is to this story it would still be interesting for the sake of Lucille Ball, who livens up an already lively film with a personality and a big-hearted gift for comedy that is exciting to see. Woven in and out of the passages at arms between the two women —which end in a surprising victory—are a couple of threads of romance, conducted skilfully on the one hand by Louis Hayward, and in the other by Ralph Bellamy, who blossoms forth surprisingly as a ballet impresario. And there, for all too short a time, is Maria Ouspenskaya as Madame Basilova, mother by proxy to all her students, deft and sure in her acting.