The Doughgirls

Amazing what you can do with the lowly soybean. Not only can you make gasoline out of it but you can make eight year old scotch, caviar, and horseradish. Just think of how many horses that could save.

This movie is a little gem. Jane Wyman is a hoot. After seeing her in nothing but fifties weepies and Falcon Crest her turn as a scatterbrain newlywed bride having her honeymoon interrupted by two of her best friends and then all and sundry shows her as an adept comedian.

Alexis Smith and Ann Sheridan as the girlfriends, Jack Carson (always a pleasure to see) and Eve Arden as the Russian soldier (Cyd Charise had to have watched this movie over and over because her Ninotchka accent is a dead on mimic of Eve Arden but with a more serious tone) round out the perfect cast for this screwball comedy.

This movie is just plain funny. It has fast and sassy snappy patter and just breezes along.

Check out those hairstyles! The clothes! How well photographed it is!

This film might seem odd to modern sensibilities, but let yourself go back to a simpler time where the motion picture code ruled and there was a censor right around every corner. I was rather surprised by a scene involving a bottle of scotch, the bell boy and the room he is told to take the bottle into.

The Doughgirls is fast, fun and funny. Just go along for the ride and you won't be disappointed. Let the hilarity ensue!

Directed by James V. Kern from the Joseph A. Fields play, adapted by Kern and Sam Hellman with additional material from Wilkie Mahoney, this wartime comedy features a terrific cast in yet another story about how the crowded living conditions in our nation's capital during World War II made strange bedfellows and played havoc with relationships.

It all starts when Jack Carson and Jane Wyman get married and try to begin their honeymoon in a Washington, D.C. hotel whose lobby is overrun with people needing a room. Despite their reservation, they discover that their room's bathtub is already occupied by Ann Sheridan's character, who happens to be ditzy Wyman's old chorus line pal. Naturally she's allowed to stay as is their other gal-pal Alexis Smith, who's married to a lieutenant (actress Smith's soon to be husband Craig Stevens).

Things really heat up when Sheridan's husband's (John Ridgely) ex- wife (Irene Manning) shows up, and a gun-toting female Russian army sergeant (Eve Arden) and Carson's lecherous boss (Charles Ruggles) join the mix, further delaying-frustrating Wyman-Carson's consummation.

Alan Mowbray appears as a radio correspondent. Donald MacBride, a judge and Regis Toomey, an FBI man also appear.

Many of the reviews here seem to be posted by people who have no clue as to the time period of history which this film is set in. When you watch an older contemporary film you need to be able to watch it with the mindset of a viewer seeing it in a theater at it's release. If you can't relate to 1944, you don't get this film. If you do it's a true gem.

Warner's threw it's best female leads at this, Ann Sheridan, Jane Wyman and Alexis Smith (sans Bette Davis), capped off with Eve Arden in a memorable role, added Jack Carson and the reliable John Ridgely, stirred in Charlie Ruggles, Alan Mowbry and Regis Toomey in brief support and a supporting cast rated A+ It is a manic comedy, but if you don't get the political and historic tongue in cheek it falls flat. If you do, sublime!

Director James V. Kern also co-adapted this screen-translation of a once-popular play by Joseph Fields involving three would-be brides rooming together in the Honeymoon Suite of an overcrowded hotel in WWII-era Washington, D.C. They are joined by confused suitors, Eve Arden as a gregarious Russian guerrilla fighter, an amusingly out-of-it hotel staff, a blustery broadcaster, and the inimitable Charles Ruggles as the smitten boss of dotty Jane Wyman, whose heart belongs to flustered Jack Carson (who only wants to have his honeymoon!). Breathless farce came in on the tail-end of the screwball rage, but nevertheless contains several big laughs. The staginess of the material becomes overpowering before long, but the cast never runs out of energy. **1/2 from ****

I was so busy watching ANN SHERIDAN looking so great that I had a hard time keeping track of the zany plot. She really had a flair for comedy, even this kind of absurd farce, that it's a shame she was never given better scripts. JANE WYMAN plays the sort of dumb blonde that made Marilyn famous (only she's a brunette here)--but she too is saddled with overly dumb remarks that even JACK Carson has a hard time swallowing. And ALEXIS SMITH proves that behind that frozen puss she has a real sense of humor. Catch the scene where she stoops to telling a tale of woe in a Brooklyn accent! Incidentally, her boyfriend in the film is the man she eventually married in real life--CRAIG REYNOLDS.

I don't fault the actors. CHARLES RUGGLES is actually quite good as a businessman attracted to Wyman. And character actor JOHN RIDGELY gets to play a prominent supporting role as Sheridan's fiancé with a good deal of amiable charm and skill. For these reasons alone, the film is worth watching despite the over-baked ham.

But beware of most of the farce, which is directed with the finesse of a sledgehammer bearing down on all the lines, emphasized by big close-ups of the cast in wide-eyed reaction shots in case we don't get the point.

It's another in a number of wartime films (WWII) emphasizing the overcrowded hotel conditions in Washington, D.C. from the very opening shot--similar to "The More the Merrier" and "Government Girl."

Terribly overdone, downright hammy performances from everyone including EVE ARDEN as "a Russian Sergeant York" who shoots her rifle from the terrace. Jane Wyman's character gets annoying after the first few remarks and from then on I kept my eyes on Sheridan. Her reactions are priceless, if a bit over-the-top.

Trivia note: MARK STEVENS has only a couple of lines to say during one of the crowded hotel scenes as Reynolds' Army friend and NATALIE SCHAEFER has no lines at all as a woman holding a baby.