Le monde des musicals

Film (1944)

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Musique: Jerome Kern •
Paroles: Ira Gershwin •
Livret:
Production à la création:

Cover Girl is a 1944 American comedy musical film starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. The film tells the story of a chorus girl given a chance at stardom when she is offered an opportunity to be a highly paid cover girl. The film was directed by Charles Vidor, and was one of the most popular musicals of the war years.

Awards and honors
Carmen Dragon and Morris Stoloff won the 1944 Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

The following were nominated, but did not win:
Lionel Banks, Cary Odell and Fay Babcock for Best Art Direction
Rudolph Maté and Allen M. Davey for Best Cinematography
Jerome Kern (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) for Best Original Song for "Long Ago (and Far Away)"
John P. Livadary for Best Sound, Recording.
The song "Long Ago (and Far Away)" was also ranked 92nd on the American Film Institute's 2004 list AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs.

Columbia Pictures originally wanted to use Warner Bros. star Dennis Morgan for Cover Girl, but when Kelly's project at MGM, Dragon Seed, was postponed, MGM extended their loan of Kelly to Columbia, allowing this film to be made with him. Columbia's production head, Harry Cohn, was initially opposed to having Kelly do the film, but producer Schwartz nevertheless obtained him, promising Kelly that he would be able to choreograph, which MGM had not allowed him to do.

Columbia gave Kelly almost complete control over the making of this film, and many of his ideas contributed to its lasting success. He removed several of the soundstage walls so that he, Hayworth, and Silvers could dance along an entire street in one take. He also used trick photography so that he could dance with his own reflection in the sequence "Alter-Ego Dance", achieved using superimposition to give his "double" a ghost-like quality. Kelly, along with Stanley Donen, devised the choreography. Film historians consider Cover Girl the point where Kelly hit his stride in a musical role that foreshadowed the best of his future work.

The film was Hayworth's fourth musical: the first two she had done opposite Fred Astaire. Hayworth's singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears.

Cover Girl was Columbia's first Technicolor musical, and songwriter Arthur Schwartz's first venture into producing. The film was a big hit, and made stars out of both Hayworth and Kelly. The success of Cover Girl caused MGM to pay closer attention to Kelly as a viable property, and they allowed him to create his own dance numbers for his next film, Anchors Aweigh (1945), also starring Frank Sinatra. Columbia bought the film rights to Pal Joey, which Kelly had done on Broadway, hoping to pair up Kelly and Hayworth again, but MGM refused to loan him out, and instead the film was made with Sinatra playing the lead.

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