Under Cover

I was a bit under the weather so I stayed at home. In the morning I baked pumpkin bread. In the afternoon I watched "Cover Girl," the 1944 musical starring Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, and Phil Silvers. It felt decadent to be watching TV in the daytime.

Bob watched with me, even though he claims to dislike musicals because of their artificiality. That's exactly what I like about them. This one was full of chorus girls in forties hairdo's (with silly little hats pinned atop their pompadours), plucked eyebrows, tons of pancake make-up, and shimmering gowns. Not as shimmering as in the platinum thirties, however. In the forties, fashion was going soft and frilly for evening wear. The"Gone with the Wind" look was big. Oh, and there were a lot of exposed legs, this being the era of the pin-up girl. Rita Hayworth was a favorite of the GIs.

The glaring subtext of this musical is that "just folks" are morally superior to rich uptight snobs: Brooklyn versus Broadway.The rich folks were WASPS, the poor folks were Italian, Irish, and Jewish. There were hints as to their ethnicity, but nothing was openly stated -- like in the older movies where "gay" is coded in the script, obvious but hidden. Of course, African-Americans were entirely absent since there were no train scenes (porters and shoe shine boys) and the heroine wasn't rich enough to have a maid.