There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Columbia pictures tried for the first time in COVER GIRL to make a high budget film. Many inventions pave the way for future movies. One is the flashback as several scenes set forty years before the action. One is an out of character choreographed sequence when Gene Kelly dances with his alter ego his own choreography. One is a hodge podge of themes as the comedy routines of Stanley Donen, Phil Silvers and Gene Kelly alternating with Rita Hayworth's brilliant portrayal of a poor girl reaching for her dreams at the expenses of giving up her happiness. The harsh color pallet of the forties and the less brilliant panning shots of the choreographed sequences are the reasons I do not rank this academy award winning box office smash higher.

Never mind the studio with more stars than there are in heaven, this war-time musical has more colours than there are in a rainbow. "Cover Girl" really is a feast for the eyes and one can imagine it cheering up cinema-goers of the day and taking their minds off events overseas.The plot is a little silly as it tends to be in so many musicals I guess as lovely show-girl Rita Hayworth finds herself torn between true love for a jobbing choreographer (Gene Kelly obviously) and an ardent suitor who's a rich theatre-owner, in almost exactly the same dilemma as her identical grandmother forty years ago. Her present-day pursuer is coincidentally sponsored, if that's the right word, by an even richer publishing magnate on the search for the face of the year to emblazon on his magazine's cover, who wouldn't you know it was the spurned lover all those years ago. The latter scenario gives Hayworth the opportunity to dress up in turn-of-the-century costumes and sing (albeit her vocals are obviously dubbed) more old-fashioned Vaudevillian numbers. The outcome in both time-frames naturally is never in doubt.Employing the familiar device of a pair of love-birds (Kelly and Hayworth) and their tag-along pal, on this occasion a slightly camp Phil Silvers of all people, the film is undemanding entertainment, if not, in my opinion, of the very best of its type. The songs I'm not totally familiar with and sound to my ears pleasant if not outstanding. Charles Vidor directs solidly and occasionally stolidly, the camera staying fairly static throughout especially for the tiresome cavalcade of contemporary popular woman's magazine covers and Hayworth's ancestor's hackneyed routines of yesterday, including the worst attempt at a Cockney accent until Dick Van Dyck in "Mary Poppins".The best sequence is undoubtedly when Kelly dances with his own bad self in a routine reminiscent of similar trick-devices employed by the great Astaire. Hayworth however holds her own in her own numbers and photographs beautifully in glorious colour. Neither has to overstretch themselves in the straight-acting stakes and it's probably fair to say they don't try too hard anyway, but one can still easily imagine this light and bright movie cheering up war-time audiences back in the day.

So the message of this movie is stay with the person you truly love because he doesn't want you to become a famous Broadway star because he'll never be one. Huh? Even though you're in the entertainment business don't have any ambition . Why do the three of them wish for an oyster then? Rita Hayworth is the only reason to watch this movie. She's outrageously beautiful, charming, and my favorite female dancer. She moves beautifully and is very underrated as a dancer.imho. Kelly except for the dance he does with himself (yes that's right) is pretty wasted in a role as jealous schmuck who seemingly has no ambition other than running his Brooklyn show. Plus there's the always annoying kvetching of Phil Silvers. Fast forward to Rita's dance numbers and forget the rest.

This is really worth it for Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, and different reasons for each. I enjoy these splashy films from old Hollywood in part because by now we can glean enough about the various circumstances surrounding that stage where everything was shown to be dreamy, enough to recognize tatters of private darkness planted or inadvertently mirrored in the actual films that challenge the polished image. We can supply extra depth that was kept from the public at the time. Extra beauty mixed with pain that is about the effort to stage beauty.So Rita is the radiant face center stage, performing for the dreams of two men, now and once in the past. Her story is another in a long line of Hollywood intrigue and covert allure with dark spots and well kept secrets. We know how she was groomed by the studio into the image that we came to know and love, how she was deeply troubled in a number of ways, most notably alcohol and men, how she was never allowed to sing and which embarrassed her in public. There is all of that funneled in this one here from a tumultuous life in the big stage of movies. She sparkles, but with a hint of precious fragility.The day the wedding scene for the film was shot, she eloped with Orson Welles. And she was the first female lead to dance with both Astaire and Kelly, accomplished here.And there is Gene, on and off that stage, fighting to stage a show around her that is about the feet and not just the beautiful face. He was on loan from MGM to Columbia for this and granted full creative control to stage the show that we see, the experience from this would go on to pay dividends for MGM at the time of Singin' in the Rain.His character's show inside the film is barely okay, a lot of tap crowded in a small venue. But it's what he choreographs outside that has magic; the cover-girl show where the giant lens of a camera descends on stage and colorful dreams of women unfold inside the eye, our eye, framed as magazine covers; the number with the three of them out on the street done in a sweeping take that we would see again in Singin'; Rita's grand Broadway show in that titanic stage receeding far in the back; the Alter-Ego number above all, a brilliant thing where he's called to out-dance his own reflection.It's marvellous stuff on the whole about a dance that can engage a dream to reveal the true beat of the heart. Turns out that the dream was not fame or money, not the image on the cover, but love for this girl.