A Film Canon

In many ways, this is a typical B-picture, replete with one-dimensional acting, a substitution of back-projection for extensive sets, and an implausible, contrived script, whose crises are too sudden to be dramatic, but not incongruous enough to be comic. Nevertheless, within these parameters Arzner achieves a distinctive feminist take on the backstage musical, posing the question of what it would take for ballet dancer Judy O'Brien (Maureen O'Hara) to be truly independent; or, alternatively, to live up to her claim that "dancing means everything to me...I've never cared about anything else." Most obviously, the narrative forestalls its own romantic determinism, withdrawing O'Brien's supposed love interest (Ralph Bellamy) at the last minute, and replacing him with a relationship that is largely, if not entirely, professional. This, in turn, clarifies the entire romantic narrative as a mere piece of choreography, a rehearsal for the dances that O'Brien can now master. Along with this independence from men, Arzner guarantees her independence from the burlesque audience, in the form of a powerful, intelligent tirade, that not only confronts them with their infantilism, but represents such a marked departure from the film's own infantile tone as to be a simultaneous confrontation of the viewer: "What do you suppose we think of you up here...We'd laugh back at the lot of you, only we're paid to let you sit there..." However, Arzner's most subversive move is to construe female solidarity itself - and, more specifically, the kind of sisterhood that abounds backstage - as detrimental to female independence. Hence burlesque queen Tiger Lily White (Lucille Ball), whose immense charisma doesn't ultimately compensate for her exploitative instincts, encapsulated in her coercion of Judy into the unfortunate role of 'stooge' - a dancer whose sole function is to incur the contempt of the audience, in order that the main act look stronger by comparison.