Betty Grable and Dan Dailey in MOTHER WORE TIGHTS (1947)

A few days ago, I watched the hand and footprint ceremony of the legendary Carol Burnett, an honor too long in coming by my estimation. During her speech, Carol reminisced about visiting the prints in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with her grandmother when she was a child. The one she wanted to see most was that of her favorite movie star, Betty Grable. That of course got me thinking – as a huge admirer of both women, I should congratulate Ms. Burnett and honor Ms. Grable.

Carol Burnett was not the only Grable fan during Betty’s reign as the queen of Twentieth Century Fox. Betty Grable was the definitive pin up during World War II, a top ten box office draw for ten years running (1942-1951), a record that has yet to be broken, and the highest paid celebrity from 1943 to 1951. Her forty movies grossed over $100 million, a buying power of over a billion today. Despite that, Grable did not take her talent too seriously famously stating, “There are two reasons why I am successful in show business, and I am standing on both of them” referring to her famous legs which were insured by Twentieth Century Fox at Lloyd’s of London for a cool million. But as Robert Osborne said during one of his introductions of a Grable movie on TCM years ago, there had to be talent there and indeed there was. Grable could sing, dance, was beautiful, and her innate charm and down-to-earth nature came across the screen despite the lavish productions Fox ensured for her, productions that were the perfect escape from the troubling War Years.

In show business for many years by the time 1940 came around, audiences took notice of Betty Grable in earnest when she replaced Alice Faye in Irving Cummings’ Down Argentine Way released that year. Grable got her first starring role in that, and it made her a superstar setting up the golden decade of her career with each Grable movie more popular than the previous.

I could go on and on about Betty Grable, a favorite of mine since I was a child (who knew Carol Burnette and I had so much in common?), but for now I will focus on one of my favorites of her movies and also one of her best to commemorate her death on July 2, 1956, at the age of 56. In glorious Technicolor, the movie is Walter Lang’s Mother Wore Tights from 1947.

Narrated by Anne Baxter in flashbacks as the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Frank Burt (Dan Dailey) and Myrtle McKinley (Betty Grable), Mother Wore Tights is a turn of the century tale. The story begins as high schooler Myrtle accepts a job with a vaudeville troupe. Myrtle was supposed to attend business school, but she is a natural on stage, destined to make it her life’s work. That deal is sealed when she falls in love and marries Frank Burt, one of the dancer/singers in the troupe. Before long, Frank and Myrtle are popular as a duo and are travelling the circuit as Burt and McKinley. In the interim the couple has two daughters, live through a bit of drama, and dance and sing throughout all of it on gorgeous sets.

Mother Wore Tights is a simple story told with flair, as those 20^th Century Fox musicals tended to do. The color cinematography by Harry Jackson was nominated for an Oscar, Alfred Newman won the Academy Award for the score, which is fantastic, and the beautiful ballad, “You Do” by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon was nominated for Original Song. It never fails that I am introduced to one of the standards in a Grable movie.

Betty Grable is at her peak in Mother Wore Tights, stunning in Orry-Kelly costumes and she has plenty of opportunity to sing and dance, both of which she was quite good at. In support of its biggest star, Fox hired Dan Dailey straight out of WWII service. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where Dailey was employed before the War, did not renew his contract so Dailey signed with 20^th Century Fox and, as a born song-and-dance-man was a perfect partner for Grable. She did not know it by the time Tights was ready to go though. Rumors are that both James Cagney and Fred Astaire were possibilities. However, Cagney was not released by Warner Bros., and Astaire wanted to change the script too much in favor of the Frank character. With the title of the movie being Mother Wore Tights, it made no sense to make father the primary character.

During production, it was reported that Fred did not appear in the movie because Betty Grable refused to give him first billing. Grable dispelled those rumors saying she would have taken no billing at all to dance with Fred Astaire. Anyway, things turned out as they should have turned out. Betty Grable and Dan Dailey made a terrific screen pair. He is my favorite of her leading men. They also became great friends in real life. Mother Wore Tights was the first of four pictures Betty and Dan made together with the others being, Walter Lang’s When My Baby Smiles at Me (1947), Henry Koster’s My Blue Heaven (1950), and Lloyd Bacon’s Call Me Mister (1951).

As is the case with many classic movies, Mother Wore Tights is made better by a standout supporting cast even in tiny roles. In addition to Sara Allgood, you get William Frawley, Lee Patrick, Sig Ruman, Maude Eburne, and a few other familiar faces. Also quite good are Mona Freeman as the couple’s eldest daughter, Iris, and Connie Marshall as the young Mikie. In one particularly entertaining sequence, the Burts go on vacation to a sprawling if boring place in Boston where several of the players converge. When the family arrives, the other patrons sit silently throughout the estate, but with the talent in the Burt family it does not take long for the place to start jumping. A couple of the songs had me slapping my knee. It is during this vacation that Iris meets a high society young man, Bob Clarkman (Robert Arthur), which results in the girls enrolling in an exclusive boarding school. Suddenly ashamed of her vaudevillian parents, Iris withdraws from embarrassment, which can only be cured by a performance of Burt and McKinley for all her friends, which is a resounding success. Iris not only accepts the careers her parents have chosen, but is proud of them dedicating to them the song they introduced in vaudeville so many years before, “Who knows how much I love you? You Do.”

Those darn standards get me every time.

Mother Wore Tights is a leisurely fun time, a sentimental yarn for the days when thinking is overrated, and you have time to spare on beautiful people in Technicolor. It really is no wonder people went to the movies in droves in the 1940s.

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Betty Grable (December 18, 1916 – July 2, 1973