Twirl Power

In the 1940 movie Dance, Girl, Dance — this week’s installment in the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Library’s 16-millimeter film series known as The RKO Story — Lucille Ball plays a character, Bubbles, who would make Lucy Ricardo blush. When her hula dancing makes a booking agent smile, she gets a top-dollar gig in a burlesque show, but she has to leave her goody-goody troupe behind.

One of the goody-goodies, Judy, wants to be a ballet dancer. She stretches every night while Bubbles goes out. Trouble sets in when they fall for the same man, a customer who starts a collection drive to make up for the dancers’ losses after cops bust the club. When Bubbles asks Judy to be her new opening act, it seems the two friends might reconcile. Unfortunately, Judy’s brief toe-dancing interlude in the middle of a striptease is intended to be a joke, and being the butt of a joke that propels Bubbles’ career is not Judy’s idea of advancement.

The movie’s director, Dorothy Arzner, is now lauded for the sly feminist accents she snuck into Dance, Girl, Dance. Judy stubbornly refuses a suitor’s help even when she’s stuck in the rain with no umbrella and her only dime has just rolled into the sewer. And she stops in the middle of her toe dance to tell the men how she and all the other dancers think they’re goons, reminding them that if it weren’t for the money, nobody would be removing garments for anyone.

But the movie’s feminist touches are just love pats by today’s standards. They even feel a little backward, considering the compromised ending.

Still, it’s fun to watch Lucille Ball in a role like this. Just one viewing provides a treasure chest of great pickup lines, such as: “I could go on all night, but the piccolo’s getting dry.”