Main Cast: Bob Hope, Tony Martin, Arlene Dahl, Rosemary Clooney, Millard Mitchell
Release Year: 1953
Country: US
Run Time: 100 minutes
Plot
Originally intended as a 3D film, this standard-issue Bob Hope musical comedy was released "flat." The 50-year-old Hope plays over-aged chorus boy Stanley Snodgrass, whose attempts to get ahead in the early 20th-century theatre world always come acropper. His luck suddenly changes when he's promoted to the leading-man role in a show headlined by Irene Bailey (Arlene Dahl). What Stanley doesn't know is that he's been set up as a decoy to bring the murderous Jack the Slasher (Robert Strauss) out in the open. It seems that Jack is obsessed with Irene, and has a nasty habit of cutting all of her male co-stars into ribbons. Meanwhile, Stanley lays waste to the show by performing all of his big numbers incorrectly, but his faithful gal Daisy Crockett (Rosemary Clooney) loves him all the same. Tony Martin also appears as Irene's boyfriend, while Millard Mitchell makes his final film appearance as Stanley's stepfather (and never mind that he and Hope were the same age!) A brief clip from Here Come the Girls showed up in, of all places, the 1953 sci-fier Conquest of Space. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Bob Hope tries mighty hard to give a lift to Here Come the Girls, but no comic can save a comedy that simply doesn't have gags. Oh sure, writers Edmund L. Hartmann and Hal Kanter have sprinkled a few winning jokes and situations throughout Girls, but they've also loaded it down with strings of words that may aspire to be jokes but fall far short and set-ups that try to springboard into comedy but just keep missing. Hope's fine; it's not his best performance by far, but he's doing everything he's supposed to in order to make the poor material work. It doesn't help matters that this musical is saddled with a Jay Livingston-Ray Evans score which is at best middling and more often strictly ho-hum. Even the goldplated vocal chords of Rosemary Clooney can't disguise the fact that these songs simply are not very good. Again, don't blame Clooney; she's aces. And don't blame that fine character actor Fred Clark, or the perfectly acceptable Tony Martin, or the lovely to look at Arlene Dahl. Director Claude Binyon does pump some energy into the proceedings when possible, notably in the climactic chase, and Hope fans will certainly find things to like. It just needed to be a lot funnier -- period. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
