Bud Hooper, a cadet at Winsocki Military Academy, sends an invitation to movie star Lucille Ball to come to Winsocki's big dance. Ball's publicity-hungry agent convinces her to go in order to boost her career. Complications arise when Bud's girlfriend Helen Schlesinger unexpectedly shows up, too.
10-08-1943
1h 35m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Edward Buzzell
Production:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Revenue:
$2,704,000
Budget:
$1,162,000
Key Crew
Screenplay:
Irving Brecher
Screenplay:
Fred F. Finklehoffe
Producer:
Arthur Freed
Songs:
Hugh Martin
Art Direction:
Cedric Gibbons
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in America during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ball received thirteen Emmy Award nominations and four wins. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name Dianne Belmont. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then husband, Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Ethel and Fred Mertz, the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. They then changed the format a little - lengthening the time of the show from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first one went 75 mins), adding some characters, altering the storyline somewhat, and renaming the show from "I Love Lucy" to "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour", which ran for three seasons (1957–1960) and 13 episodes. Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show, which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1968 (156 Episodes), and Here's Lucy from 1968 to 1974 (144 episodes). Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life with Lucy - which failed miserably after 8 episodes aired although 13 were produced.
Ball met and eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940. On July 17, 1951, almost 40 years old, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.
On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm at age 77. At the time of her death she had been married to her second husband, standup comedian and business partner Gary Morton, for twenty-eight years.
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June Allyson (October 7, 1917 – July 8, 2006) was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss (1951). From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson. A later generation knew her as a spokesperson for Depend undergarments.
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Gloria Mildred DeHaven (born July 23, 1925) is an American actress, singer and a former contract star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
DeHaven was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actor-director, Carter DeHaven, and actress, Flora Parker DeHaven, both former vaudeville performers.
She began her career as a child actor with a bit part in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). She was signed to a contract with MGM. Despite featured roles in such films as Best Foot Forward, The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) and Summer Stock (1950), and being voted by exhibitors as the third most likely to be a "star of tomorrow'" in 1944, she did not achieve film stardom. She portrayed her own mother, Flora Parker DeHaven, in the Fred Astaire film Three Little Words (1950).
DeHaven also appeared as a regular in the television series and soap operas As the World Turns, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Ryan's Hope. She was one of the numerous celebrities enticed to appear in the all-star box office flop, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and has guest starred in such television series as Robert Montgomery Presents, Appointment with Adventure (episode entitled "The Snow People"), The Guy Mitchell Show, Johnny Ringo (as Rosemary Blake in "Love Affair"), The Rifleman, Wagon Train, The Lloyd Bridges Show, Marcus Welby, M.D., Gunsmoke, Mannix, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, The Love Boat, Mama's Family, Highway to Heaven, Murder, She Wrote and Touched by an Angel. She was also on five episodes of Match Game 75 along with Patti Deutsch and Buck Owens as guest panelists.
Gloria DeHaven died July 30, 2016 (age 91), in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
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Chill Theodore Wills (July 18, 1902 – December 15, 1978) was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.
He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s. After appearing in a few westerns he disbanded the group in 1938, and struck out on a solo acting career.
One of his more memorable roles was that of the distinctive voice of Francis the Mule in a series of popular films. Wills' deep, rough voice, with its Western twang, was matched to the personality of the cynical, sardonic mule. As was customary at the time, Wills was given no billing for his vocal work, though he was featured prominently on-screen as blustery General Ben Kaye in the fourth entry, Francis Joins the WACS. He provided the deep voice for Stan Laurel's performance of "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" in Way Out West (1937), in which the Avalon Boys Quartet appeared.
Wills was cast in numerous serious film roles, including as "the city of Chicago" as personified by a phantom police sergeant in the film noir City That Never Sleeps (1953), and that of Uncle Bawley in Giant (1956), which also features Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. Wills was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as Davy Crockett's companion "Beekeeper" in the film The Alamo (1960). However, his aggressive campaign for the award was considered tasteless by many, including the film's star/director/producer John Wayne, who publicly apologized for Wills. Wills' publicity agent, W.S. "Bow-Wow" Wojciechowicz, accepted blame for the ill-advised effort, claiming that Wills had known nothing about it. The Oscar was instead won by Peter Ustinov for his role as Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus.
In Rory Calhoun's CBS western series The Texan, Wills appeared in the lead role in the 1960 episode entitled "The Eyes of Captain Wylie".
Wills starred in the short-run series Frontier Circus which aired for only one season (1961–62) on CBS. In 1966, he was cast in the role of a shady Texas rancher, Jim Ed Love, in the short-lived ABC comedy/western series The Rounders (reprising his role in the 1965 film The Rounders, starring Henry Fonda), with co-stars Ron Hayes, Patrick Wayne and Walker Edmiston.
in 1963-64, Wills joined William Lundigan, Walter Brennan and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in making appearances on behalf of U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee in the campaign against U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 1968, Wills refused to support Richard Nixon for the presidency and served as master of ceremonies for George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama, for the California campaign stops in Wallace's presidential campaign.[5] Wills was among the few Hollywood celebrities to endorse Wallace's bid against Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey; another was Walter Brennan.
Also in 1968, he starred in the Gunsmoke episode "A Noose for Dobie Price", where he played Elihu Gorman, a former outlaw who joins forces with Marshal Matt Dillon, played by James Arness, to track down a member of his former gang who has escaped jail. His last role was in 1978, as a janitor in Stubby Pringle's Christmas. CLR
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Henry O'Neill (1891–1961) was an American film actor known for playing gray-haired fathers, lawyers, and similarly roles during the 1930s and 1940s.
O'Neill began his acting career on the stage, after dropping out of college to join a traveling theatre company. He served in the military in World War I, then returned to the stage.
In the early 1930s he began appearing in films, including The Big Shakedown, Santa Fe Trail, Anchors Aweigh, The Green Years, and The Reckless Moment. His last film was The Wings of Eagles.
Henry O'Neill died in 1961 at the age of 69.
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Sara Haden (born Catherine Haden, November 17, 1898 – September 15, 1981) was a character actress in Hollywood films of the 1930s through the 1950s and in television into the mid-1960s. She may be best remembered for appearing as Aunt Milly Forrest in thirteen entries in MGM's Andy Hardy film series.
Haden first appeared on the stage in the early 1920s. As early as October 1920, she was appearing with Walter Hampden's acting troupe. Her Broadway debut came in Trigger (1927).
She made her film debut in 1934 (one year after her mother's retirement) in the Katharine Hepburn vehicle Spitfire. Haden later became a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player in the late 1930s and had smallish roles in many of the studio's films, most notably in the Andy Hardy series starring Mickey Rooney, cast as the spinsterish Aunt Milly Forrest.
Haden made her last film, Andy Hardy Comes Home, in 1958, but was active on television until a 1965 guest spot on Dr. Kildare. She was most notable for her stern, humorless characterisations such as a truant officer in Shirley Temple's Captain January (1936), but she also played the much-loved teacher Miss Pipps, who is unjustly fired in the Our Gang comedy Come Back, Miss Pipps (1941). Other films in which she appeared include Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), and The Bishop's Wife (1947). Her television appearances include episodes of Climax!, Bourbon Street Beat, and Bonanza. She had a guest appearance on Perry Mason as Florence Harvey in the 1959 episode, "The Case of the Romantic Rogue".
Haden played Dora Darling in My Favorite Martian, season 2 episode 28, "Once Upon a Martian's Mother's Day" in 1965.
She was married to film actor Richard Abbott (born Seamon Vandenberg; 1899-1986) from 1921 until their divorce in 1948. Sara Haden died on September 15, 1981 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at age 82.
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Donald Hugh MacBride (June 23, 1893 – June 21, 1957) was an American character actor on stage, in films, and on television who launched his career as a teenage singer (making several recordings in 1907) in vaudeville and went on to be an actor on Broadway, where he appeared in Room Service.
He appeared in nearly 140 films between 1914 and 1955. His year of birth is given variously as 1889 or 1893 in the standard reference books, but the latter seems to be the correct one as his New York Times obituary records his age as 63.
MacBride was best known for his portrayal of detectives in crime films. One such role was as Sgt. Roberts in the 1941 comedy Topper Returns, starring Roland Young. He also did several slapstick roles in films with comedians such as the Marx Brothers.
He had the role of Milton J. Clyde on the television version of My Friend Irma.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and died in Los Angeles, California. Survivors included his wife and a stepson.
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Morris Ankrum (born Morris Nussbaum, August 28, 1896 – September 2, 1964) was an American radio, television and film character actor.
Before signing with Paramount Pictures in the 1930s, Nussbaum had already changed his last name to Ankrum. Upon signing with the studio, he chose to use the name "Stephen Morris" before changing it to Morris Ankrum in 1939.
Ankrum's stern visage and sharply defined features helped cast him in supporting roles as stalwart authority figures, including scientists, military men (particularly army officers), judges and even psychiatrists in more than 150 films, mostly B movies. One standout role was in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's production of Tennessee Johnson (1942), a biographical film about Andrew Johnson, the 17th U.S. president. As Sen. Jefferson Davis, Ankrum movingly addresses the United States Senate upon his resignation to lead the Confederate States of America as that republic's first—and only—president. Ankrum's film career was extensive and spanned 30 years. His credits were largely concentrated in the western and science-fiction genres.
Ankrum appeared in such westerns as Ride 'Em Cowboy in 1942, Vera Cruz opposite Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, Apache (1954), and Cattle Queen of Montana with Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan.
In the sci-fi genre, he appeared in Rocketship X-M (1950), Flight to Mars (1951), as a Martian, Red Planet Mars (1952), playing the United States Secretary of Defense; the cult classic Invaders From Mars (1953), playing a United States Army officer; and as an Army general in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). In 1957 he played a psychiatrist in the cult sci-fi classic Kronos and had military-officer roles in Beginning of the End and The Giant Claw.
Harry James was born in a rundown hotel next to the city jail in Albany, Georgia. His mother and father were members of a circus - she as a trapeze artist and he a band leader - with the Mighty Haag Circus. At seven, they settled in Beaumont, Texas where Harry learned yo play drums. By twelve, he was playing trumpet in the Christy Brothers circus band. In 1936 James joined Ben Pollack's band, soon leaving to lead the brass section of Benny Goodman's band. He even once applied to Lawrence Welk's band but was turned down because they said he played too loud and it was not Welk's style. After three years with Goodman, he wanted to leave, and with Goodman's backing, he formed the Music Makers. In 1943 he married pinup queen Betty Grable, his second of four wives. He had earlier married and divorced Louise Tobin, a singer. Grable kept appearing in movies and Harry kept playing while they raised horses. He made his debut in Philadelphia at the Ben Franklin Hotel and soon was a nationwide favorite of dance lovers and jazz addicts, rocking the rafters at the Hollywood Paladium, Chicago's famous College Inn at the Hotel Sherman, Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook in Cedar Cove, NJ, and then onto New York City. It was the Lincoln Hotel in NYC that the Music Makers called home, but James also starred at the Paramount Theater in the spring of 1943, with thousands of teenagers flocking to see him. His version of You Made Me Love You was a big hit and a favorite of many through the war years. James was a great discoverer of talent, finding Frank Sinatra working as a waiter in a New Jersey restaurant and giving him a job singing in his band. Dick Haymes, Kitty Kallen, Connie Haines and Helen Forrest can all thank James for giving them their first real break. In 1963 his band was featured at Disneyland, still known as the Music Makers. He played his last gig at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on June 26, 1983, just a few days before dying of lymphatic cancer.
Stanley Donen (April 13, 1924-February 23, 2019) was an American film director and choreographer hailed by David Quinlan as "the King of the Hollywood musicals". His most celebrated work was Singin' in the Rain (1952), which he co-directed with Gene Kelly.
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Bess Flowers (November 23, 1898 – July 28, 1984) was an American actress. By some counts considered the most prolific actress in the history of Hollywood, she was known as "The Queen of the Hollywood Extras," appearing in over 700 movies in her 41 year career.
Born in Sherman, Texas, Flowers's film debut came in 1923, when she appeared in Hollywood. She made three films that year, and then began working extensively. Many of her appearances are uncredited, as she generally played non-speaking roles.
By the 1930s, Flowers was in constant demand. Her appearances ranged from Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford thrillers to comedic roles alongside of Charley Chase, the Three Stooges, Leon Errol, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy.
She appeared in the following five films which won the Academy Award for Best Picture: It Happened One Night, You Can't Take it with You, All About Eve, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. In each of these movies, Flowers was uncredited. Including these five movies, she had appeared in twenty-three Best Picture nominees in total, making her the record holder for most appearances in films nominated for the award. Her last movie was Good Neighbor Sam in 1964.
Flowers's acting career was not confined to feature films. She was also seen in many episodic American TV series, such as I Love Lucy, notably in episodes, "Lucy Is Enceinte" (1952), "Ethel's Birthday" (1955), and "Lucy's Night in Town" (1957), where she is usually seen as a theatre patron.
Outside her acting career, in 1945, Bess Flowers helped to found the Screen Extras Guild (active: 1946-1992, then merged with SAG), where she served as one of its first vice-presidents and recording secretaries.
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Barbara Bedford (born Violet May Rose; July 19, 1903 – October 25, 1981) was an American actress who appeared in dozens of silent movies. Her career declined after the introduction of sound, but she continued to appear in small roles until 1945.
After high school she set out for Hollywood. She had written many fan letters to actor William S. Hart, and he helped her get a small role in his 1920 movie The Cradle of Courage. While working as an extra that same year on The White Circle, she was noticed by fellow cast member John Gilbert, who recommended her to director Maurice Tourneur. Tourneur cast her alongside Gilbert in Deep Waters. Tourneur also cast her in The Last of the Mohicans, where she was the love interest for Alan Roscoe, whom she later married in real life.
In 1925 she appeared opposite Hart in his final film, Tumbleweeds, a key western of the silent period. She starred in the 1926 silent film Old Loves and New and in Mockery with Lon Chaney the following year.
When her career declined after the switch to sound, she signed with MGM in 1936 to play bit and extra parts. Her last known film appearance was in 1945.
The diminutive (5 feet 2 inches/1.57 meters) Bletcher appeared on-screen in films and later television from the 1910s to the 1970s, including appearances in several Our Gang and Three Stooges comedies.Bletcher was also famous as a voice actor. Uncharacteristically for someone of his size, his voice was a deep and strong-sounding baritone. He provided the voices of various characters for Disney (Black Pete and the Big Bad Wolf in Three Little Pigs and its spin-offs), MGM (Spike the Bulldog and in some occasions even Tom, in Tom and Jerry), and Warner Bros. (many characters, most notably the Papa Bear of Chuck Jones' The Three Bears after Mel Blanc had performed the role in the initial entry). He appeared opposite Blanc in Little Red Riding Rabbit, where he played another famous wolf. Bletcher's booming voice can also be heard as "Dom Del Oro" the Yacqi Indian god in the 1939 Republic serial, Zorro's Fighting Legion. He also voiced Owl Jolson's disciplinarian violinist father in the 1936 short subject based on the song I Love to Singa and the menacing spider in Bingo Crosbyana. Both he and Mel Blanc did voice acting in the 1944 Private Snafu WWII training film "Gas", where Bletcher plays the villainous Gas Cloud (with Mel Blanc voicing Private Snafu and a cameo of Bugs Bunny) as an opponent of Snafu. Bletcher also played The Captain in Captain and the Kids with MGM cartoons.
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Robert Emmett O'Connor (March 18, 1885 – September 4, 1962) was an American film actor. He appeared in 204 films between 1919 and 1950. He is probably best known as the warmhearted bootlegger Paddy Ryan in The Public Enemy (1931) and as Detective Sergeant Henderson pursuing the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935). He also appeared as Jonesy (the older Paramount gate guard) in Billy Wilder's 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, as well as made a cameo appearance at the very beginning and very end of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon short Who Killed Who? (1943).
Shirley Jean Rickert (March 25, 1926 – February 6, 2009) was an American child actress who was briefly the "blonde girl" for the Our Gang series in 1931, during the Hal Roach talkie period. At 18 months of age, Rickert won a local baby beauty contest, which emboldened her mother to move the family to Hollywood. She made her screen debut at the age of four in the short How's My Baby (1930), soon followed by her Our Gang debut, Helping Grandma in 1931. Rickert's most notable appearances were in the films Love Business and Bargain Day.
After Rickert left the Our Gang series, she had a brief movie career, including starring roles as Tomboy Teri Taylor alongside Mickey Rooney in eight Mickey McGuire comedies, followed by a string of jobs including driving trucks for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. She later worked in burlesque as an exotic dancer, billed as Gilda and Her Crowning Glory (after her long blonde hair), retiring from burlesque in 1959. Description above from the Wikipedia article Shirley Jean Rickert, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Gil Stratton Jr. (June 2, 1922-October 11, 2008) was an actor and sportscaster who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He most recently resided in Toluca Lake, California until his death from congestive heart failure.
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