Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Michael O'Shea, J. Edward Bromberg, Iris Adrian, Gloria Dickson, Marion Martin
Release Year: 1943
Country: US
Run Time: 91 minutes
Plot
Barbara Stanwyck shines in her second portrayal of a showgirl in less than two years (the first was in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire in 1941). In Lady of Burlesque -- which, at times, has a Hawksian edge to the dialogue -- she portrays Dixie Daisy, a striptease artist at a Broadway theater in New York at the end of the 1930s. In the course of fending off the unwanted advances of brash comic Biff Brannigan (Michael O'Shea), with whom she is teamed in several numbers, and staying clear of the dressing room feuds of her fellow dancers -- including a very nasty dispute between Dolly Baxter (Gloria Dickson) and Lolita La Verne (Victoria Faust) -- she finds herself up to her neck in trouble when one of the women is found strangled with her own G-string. The police don't know what to make of it, especially as the victim was already dying of a fatal dose of poison, which means that there are two murderers somewhere in the theater; and when a second woman turns up strangled inside a prop that Dixie was supposed to be hiding in onstage, she looks like a good suspect. Between the backstage comedy-drama, and the songs, dances, and on-stage comic routines, with the police breathing down both their necks at different times, Dixie and Biff manage to solve the mystery and find each other in this briskly paced, funny, yet amazingly gritty comedy-thriller. Lady of Burlesque was allowed to fall out of copyright in 1971, and since then it was seen in substandard editions until the May 2001 DVD release from Image Entertainment. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Gypsy Rose Lee, who brought a veneer of erudition to the image of the striptease artist, published a best-selling mystery novel (ghostwritten by Craig Rice) in the early '40s called The G-String Murders. Former MGM producer Hunt Stromberg purchased the rights, and, with a tight screen adaptation by author James Gunn and with director William Wellman at the helm, used this film adaptation to make his debut as an independent producer. Wellman does a superb job of melding the story's mix of backstage theater ambience, mystery, musical, comedy, and romance, some of which is reminiscent in certain ways of the Thin Man movies that Stromberg oversaw at MGM, although Lady of Burlesque is grittier than those class-conscious comedy-mysteries in just about every way possible. Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea are the focal point of the story, a seemingly mismatched romantic couple who spend as much time bickering as they do solving the three crimes at hand, which start to come up surprisingly late, more than 40 minutes into the story. Released in April of 1943, but very deliberately set in the late '30s, before Mayor LaGuardia closed the burlesque houses in New York, the film treads a fine and delicate line, weaving a fascinating tale of overlapping jealousies and lusts leading to murder amid the surprisingly earthy and realistically detailed background of burlesque as it was (though this could, with fewer scantilly clad young actresses decorating most of its scenes, have been just as realistic a depiction of any low-rent theatrical setting). The characters feel as real as their environment, with Stanwyck convincingly portraying a flawed but plucky heroine (with an articulation clearly modeled on author Lee's image). O'Shea, her egocentric yet self-mocking would-be lover, and the supporting players -- from Iris Adrian's brassy portrayal of Stanwyck's gal pal and Pinky Lee's eccentric comic antics down to the actors portraying the stage hands and hangers-on -- are perfect in their parts. Viewers should also pay special attention to J. Edward Bromberg, as the kindly owner of the burlesque house, in a quiet portrayal that adds some depth to the breezy proceedings. Not all of it hangs together perfectly, as the film slows down a bit from the frantic, Howard Hawks-like pacing of its first 50 minutes, once the first murder is discovered. The mix of humor and police procedural elements gets pushed about as far as the script and the actors could carry it, with Charles Dingle's gruff, crafty police inspector playing straight man to O'Shea and Pinky Lee. But those bits of theatrical business aside, which almost break the spell, there are also all kinds of fascinating details to take in, sandwiched in the overlapping dialogue and the breakneck pacing, such as the sympathy that Stanwyck's character expresses for the Chinese kitchen workers next door (with a wartime reference that should have been anachronism but wasn't -- China was fighting Japan in 1938) and the references to Prohibition and the bootleg liquor racket as fairly recently ended activities. As much as any movie ever made as pure entertainment, which this is, Lady of Burlesque is also a tour through time and a look at a past that was already disappearing as it was being made -- and it's also got a great score and a hot number ("Take It Off the E-String") at the center of its music. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Bernard Herzbrun - Art Director, Daniel Dare - Choreography, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Natalie Visart - Costume Designer, Sam Nelson - First Assistant Director, William Wellman - Director, James Newcom - Editor, Art Lange - Composer (Music Score), Robert Stephanoff - Makeup, Joseph B. Platt - Production Designer, Robert de Grasse - Cinematographer, Hunt Stromberg - Producer, James Gunn - Screenwriter, Gypsy Rose Lee - Short Story Author
The film is a fairly faithful, if bowdlerized, adaptation of the original novel, though Gypsy Rose Lee, who appears as a character in her own book, is here renamed "Dixie Daisy" (Stanwyck). Michael O'Shea plays her romantic interest, comedian Biff Brannigan, and Iris Adrian (pictured with Stanwyck) portrays a showgirl. Pinky Lee, a burlesque comic in real life, is another of the many notable supporting players. The film attempts to depict what the censors of 1943 would allow it to show with respect to the precise nature of "bumps" and "grinds", and the slapdash nature of burlesque shows. Songs include "Take it off the A string, play it on the G string" rendered by Stanwyck.
The movie is often credited for coining the term, "Grindhouse".
