Three Little Girls in Blue
                                                                              
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone
Year: 1946
Rating: 6.0
If I keep watching these Technicolor Fox musicals, my retinas are going to be damaged. This is considered one of their minor league musicals, but I found it quite charming. I was also curious to see June Haver as a lead actress - only two years earlier she had been in the chorus in Something for the Boys starring Vivian Blaine. Here she is now co-starring with Blaine and above her in the credits. Fox was clearly molding her to be the next blonde musical star after Alice Faye had basically walked out on Fox and Grable was getting older. She actually looked to me a bit like Lana Turner. She is lovely no matter what. She doesn't really get the musical spotlight though - that goes to Blaine in a couple torch songs and to the newly minted Vera-Ellen who gets a couple numbers - one being the big splashy dream number all to herself. And the most famous song in the film - You Make Me Feel So Young. But though her singing is dubbed as are a bunch of the cast - that is her dancing and it was her dancing with Astaire and Gene Kelly that made her a star.



People back in the 1940s must have had short memories because this is a remake of Moon Over Miami made only five years previously starring Betty Grable, Carole Landis, Charlotte Greenwood, Bob Cummings and Don Ameche. No real change in the plot other than it is set in Atlantic City in the first decade of the century. That was apparently where all the millionaires hung out back then. Things have changed. Three sisters - June, Vivian and Vera-Ellen - are farm girls dreaming of getting out of the sticks and finding a wealthy man to marry them. They get an inheritance of $3,000 and figure that is enough for them to go to Atlantic City and rent the best room in the best hotel for a whopping $9.25 a day. June pretends to be rich while Vivian is her secretary and Vera-Ellen is the maid. They set their collective eyes for a millionaire for June to snag.


Vivian, Vera-Ellen, June

There are two of them - George Montgomery and Frank Latimore - see what I mean by minor league and the men never matching up to the women in Fox musicals. Both are dubbed when singing and can't dance. The men are good friends and have a friendly rivalry in going after June - she just wants one of them to propose. It all goes kablooey of course but it is a Fox musical, so you know it will end up with love all around. The black maid - Mammy - is Ruby Dandridge - mother of Dorothy. Celeste Holm shows up in her film debut and nearly walks away with the film with one song in French. Charles Smith is the bellboy that Vera-Ellen falls for and inexplicably doesn't get a credit - that must have been annoying. This is sweet enough to make a honey bee sing.