The Petty Girl—Joan Caulfield

It used to be a problem to get Joan Caulfield to pose in a bathing suit. No more. After working in “The Petty Girl,” in which she wears a gold bathing suit and gold stockings, Joan’s a new woman. Now, instead of rushing home to a good book, Joan, who sings and dances for the first time in this Columbia Technicolor musical, prefers to go out dancing. Elsa Lanchester and butler Melville Cooper, who do a hot rhumba in the film, worked as a vaudeville team twenty-five years ago in Elsa’s London theater! Illustrator George Petty helped choose the eighteen girls who appear with Joan as Petty Girls—and coached Bob Cummings, a personal friend, to act like—George Petty.

On a visit to New York, staid teachers Elsa Lanchester, Joan Caulfield meet illustrator . . .

. . . George Petty (Bob Cummings). He insists they see the night clubs. A police raid lands them in court

Humiliated, Joan returns to her job. Bob follows her, gets a job as handyman at the school. Gradually he melts her icy reserve

Snoopy teacher Mary Wickes discovers Joan is posing as a Petty Girl!

The scandal sends Joan flying to Bob, who has returned to New York. She finds him in the clutches of Mary Long who has persuaded him to drop the Petty Girl for fine arts!

Joan counters with a Petty Girl burlesque show. The results are sensational!

Winding of Joan’s Trinidad turban for one of her dance sequences took time and the help of designer Jean Louis

During a lull in the rehearsals, Joan chats with stand-in Joet Robinson and in the background Eloise Farmer and Jack McClendon, two of the dancer

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE MAY 1950