The Doughgirls (1944)

Just what I expected

Brilliant and touching

Blistering performances.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Director: JAMES V. KERN. Screenplay: James V. Kern, Sam Hellman. Additional dialogue: Wilkie Mahoney. Based on the stage play by Joseph A. Fields. Photography: Ernest Haller. Film editor: Folmar Blangsted. Art director: Hugh Reticker. Set decorators: Clarence Steenson. Music: Adolph Deutsch. Music director: Leo F. Forbstein. Costumes designed by Milo Anderson. Make-up: Perc Westmore. Montages: James Leicester. Special effects director: William McGann. Technical adviser: Nicholas Kobliansky. Dialogue director: Jack Gage. Assistant director: Phil Quinn. Sound recording: Stanley Jones. Producer: Mark Hellinger.Copyright 23 November 1944 by Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Hollywood: 30 August 1944. U.S. release: 25 November 1944. U.K. release: 30 July 1945. Australian release: 14 March 1946. Sydney opening at the Empire (on a double bill with Rhythm Round Up). 9,279 feet. 103 minutes.COMMENT: In addition to its short running time, another signal that a movie is being sold by the studio as a "B" in a particular territory is that it has sat on the shelf for a considerable period. This one cluttered up the Warner warehouse in Australia for over 18 months before slotting in for a predetermined two-week engagement in an unfashionable theater at the very periphery of the borderline separating the city from its working-class suburbs. The trio of Ann Sheridan, Jane Wyman and Jack Carson were advertised as the stars, but the movie drew less than average business. And no wonder! Here we are back in overcrowded wartime Washington, but this is no "More the Merrier". This time we are in for about a hundred minutes of boring verbosity, leavened with two or three minutes of mild humor. Neither the director nor the writers make more than a token attempt to disguise the film's stage origins. Just about the entire movie is set in the Hotel Grayson, and ninety-five per cent of the action unfolds in the one apartment. Characters enter and leave as if they were on a theater stage. Even the end-of-act curtain ensembles are left intact. And as if there wasn't a more than adequate supply of dialogue already, Mr. Wilkie Mahoney has supplied pages and pages of additional chatter. Jack Carson and Jane Wyman are forced to perform a continuous Burns and Allen act, but with even weaker comebacks! In fact, the Jane Wyman character is just too stupid for words! All the players attempt to conceal their weak material by mugging vigorously throughout. Only Charlie Ruggles succeeds. Eve Arden bears a particularly unfortunate accent burden, as she's atrociously miscast as a Russian freedom fighter. Kern's directorial style can only be described as actor-indulgent, audience-neglectful. Production values rate high, but who cares?

I saw this when it came out. Although I was only around 7 or 8 years old, I found it a very funny movie. I expect that I didn't understand most of the jokes, but the situation and the constant frenetic action, characters coming and going, must have impressed me. I found Eve Arden's character particularly funny. Firing a rifle salute from a swanky hotel balcony...wow! Looking at it now, it is clear that it was originally a stage play-characters coming and going on one set. Machine-gun rapid quips, jokes, reactions...if one joke doesn't get you, the next one will. Jane Wyman's dumb Dora character was a stock comedy character in those days (Gracie Allen). It might have been demeaning for her to play, but it made her a star before her later weepies.The Washington no rooms to rent situation is long forgotten. Absurdist humor has gone out of fashion, perhaps because our society has become so absurd that absurdity is no longer funny. Thus, a lot of the humor of this film and its satire don't register today. Yet, it was quite good for its time, and it is still a hoot to watch today.

Two love birds are cooing and romancing each other as chatty ditz Jane Wyman and irritable Jack Carson go to a justice of the peace to get married. When they come out as bride and groom, the love birds are now biting at each other. "Yaa taa taa, yaa taa taa", Carson screeches at his new wife, making talking motions with his hands. A snarky man peaks out and the viewers know that all is not what it appears to be. The loving couple arrive in overcrowded wartime Washington D.C. where the hotel lobby is overrun with people desperate for a room. Another newlywed Ann Sheridan is busy taking a bath in the room they check into and refuses to budge. This means war! Take the catty humor of "The Women", throw in war time politics and a few dozen men, and you have "The Doughgirls", the film version of the hit Broadway play of a couple of seasons before.This is not the Jane Wyman audiences know from "Johnny Belinda" or the powerful matriarch of "Falcon Crest". She is a cheery dumbbell who doesn't do dictation verbatim-she does it word for word! And when she finds out that the woman in the tub is her old pal from the chorus, she begins her marriage with more trouble than a dozen mother-in-laws could cause! Next in is another old pal, Alexis Smith, Carson's lecherous boss Charlie Ruggles ("The Parent Trap's" loving grandfather), and a hysterical Natasha-like (of Boris/Rocky/Bullwinkle fame) Eve Arden, dressed out in a military uniform, always carping "I would like a fish". "Live?", Wyman asks. "No, dead.", she says, intoning a deadpan voice that Virginia O'Brien would envy. Then, there is Irene Manning, the cold-blooded ex-wife of Sheridan's husband, who comes in as someone changes the wedding march to the funeral march upon spotting her. These are a wacky group of people of all kinds. The situation isn't at all believable, but oh, what fun it is! World War II audiences needed laughs like this, and Warner Brothers gave it to em' good here. Everybody gets a chance to shine.There's humorous bits by the society matron who uses the women to watch factory women's babies, the perplexed hotel manager ("People who don't pay their bills shouldn't shoot guns out the window"), the beleaguered spouses of Anne Sheridan and Alexis Smith (neither legal as well), and the Lou Costello like man who keeps creeping into the room trying to get some sleep. Arden steals the film from the moment she appears, and relishes it much like Dianne Wiest in "Bullets Over Broadway". She is hysterical leading the hotel maids in a brief song of the items she is exchanging at a pawn shop. Unfortunately, comedy was mostly overlooked by the Oscars in the 40's, as Arden's lack of a Supporting nomination is a true Hollywood crime.I'd like to also pay tribute to Warner Brothers' sound system, which is unlike any of its era. The crispy clear audio was as notable to Warner Brothers as the Technicolor of 20th Century Fox and the art deco looks at MGM. This is just a hysterically funny, funny film that I've shared with half a dozen friends long before Turner Classic Movies was around, and could watch at least once a year without not laughing.

Amazing what you can do with the lowly soybean. Not only can you make gasoline out of it but you can make eight year old scotch, caviar, and horseradish. Just think of how many horses that could save.This movie is a little gem. Jane Wyman is a hoot. After seeing her in nothing but fifties weepies and Falcon Crest her turn as a scatterbrain newlywed bride having her honeymoon interrupted by two of her best friends and then all and sundry shows her as an adept comedian.Alexis Smith and Ann Sheridan as the girlfriends, Jack Carson (always a pleasure to see) and Eve Arden as the Russian soldier (Cyd Charise had to have watched this movie over and over because her Ninotchka accent is a dead on mimic of Eve Arden but with a more serious tone) round out the perfect cast for this screwball comedy.This movie is just plain funny. It has fast and sassy snappy patter and just breezes along.Check out those hairstyles! The clothes! How well photographed it is!This film might seem odd to modern sensibilities, but let yourself go back to a simpler time where the motion picture code ruled and there was a censor right around every corner. I was rather surprised by a scene involving a bottle of scotch, the bell boy and the room he is told to take the bottle into.The Doughgirls is fast, fun and funny. Just go along for the ride and you won't be disappointed. Let the hilarity ensue!