Morale-boosting musicals were sure-fire crowd-pleasers during the Second World War, especially those featuring Miss Million Dollar Legs, Betty Grable. Twentieth Century Fox produced Pin Up Girl specifically to cash in on Grable’s popularity as the forces’ sweetheart and even included her famous hubba-hubba swimsuit picture as part of the opening credits. Grable plays Laurie Jones, a bubbly, blue-eyed blonde who is an understandably popular attraction at the local USO in small town Missouri. With the war going on, Laurie finds no harm in a little chaste flirting with the soldier boys, although her bespectacled gal pal Kay (Dorothea Kent) is aghast she lets some men think they’re engaged and spins a yarn about leaving to headline a Broadway show.
In truth, Laurie and Kay are off to Washington to start working as secretaries for the military. At a stopover, Laurie blags herself a table at the swanky Club Diplomacy, posing as the girlfriend of naval hero Tommy Dooley (John Harvey), then covers her tracks by convincing smiley nightclub impresario Eddie Hall (Joe E. Brown) she is a big-time musical comedy star. She takes to the stage and blows the audience away with a big song-and-dance routine, but inadvertently makes an enemy out of brassy showgirl Molly McKay (Martha Raye).
A wholesome, all-American sexuality pervades this picture, with the emphasis still firmly on romance rather than lust. Clean-cut G.I.s fantasize about chaste romance with an array of Technicolor lovelies who politely sing all they can offer is “some cocoa, a cookie or a piece of angel cake.” With the war going on, everybody needs to do their bit and in Laurie’s case that involves a little singing, but mostly looking glamorous and desirable. Feminist protests against objectifying women don’t enter into the equation, not because of any underlining misogyny but because these soldiers and sailors could be dead tomorrow. The message being, sex, romance and good times are harmless given the circumstances of WW2 and all part of what these men are fighting for.
The only one who seemingly objects to all this good-natured ogling is belligerent military staff chief Barney Briggs (gravel-voiced Eugene Palette). He warns Tommy against romancing a “shameless” showgirl and claims to hate all women, even though he’s secretly carrying on with a cute redhead on the side, flirts with a sexy cigarette girl at Club Diplomacy and exhibits more than a passing interest in Laurie herself! Adapted from a short story by Libbie Block (originally titled Imagine Us and set to star Linda Darnell and Don Ameche), the film good-naturedly ribs such sexual hypocrisy but is feather-light fluff with a plot as skimpy as one of Betty’s bathing suits.
Grable’s musical and comedy gifts are well in evidence but given this is supposed to be her star vehicle, her song-and-dance contributions are surprisingly minimal. Most are consigned to the latter third, including a mildly risqué dance sequence where Laurie plays a streetwalker and a show-stopping finale where she drills a battalion of chorus girls in uniform. The majority of screen time belongs to an array of popular big band and tap dance acts of the era. H. Bruce Humberstone, a solid journeyman whose varied directorial efforts encompassed Charlie Chan movies in the Thirties, Ritz Brothers comedies in the Forties and Tarzan pictures in the Fifties, lets the pizzazz of his performers and eye-popping Technicolor do the talking. He does however capture the infectious energy of that sparks off his varied acts, choreographed with near-insane verve by the legendary Hermes Pan. The standout being a stage number involving red, white and blue fan-waving chorus girls on roller-skates, with the spotlight following one particularly comely and talented skater girl and a male-female combo who whirl about with jaw-dropping abandon.
