Martin Cortland, a womanising theatre owner, gets into trouble when his wife Julia discovers that he has bought a diamond bracelet for a beautiful young dancer named Sheila Winthrop. In a desperate bid to save his marriage, Martin persuades his choreographer, Robert Curtis, to pretend to be Sheila's boyfriend, allowing him to claim that he bought the bracelet for Robert to give to Sheila. To further this deception, Robert asks Sheila out on a date to the same restaurant where Martin and Julia are dining together. This being a romantic comedy, Robert and Sheila end up falling for one another, but there is a further complication in that Sheila has another admirer, Army Captain Tom Barton. Things get even more complicated when Robert is drafted into the Army and finds that Tom is now his commanding officer. The title "You'll Never Get Rich" has nothing to do with the difficulties involved in accumulating wealth; it is a line from an old Army song.
This was the film which first made a major star of Rita Hayworth, cast because Columbia Pictures were looking for a replacement for Ginger Rogers as Fred Astaire's dance partner. The pairing was a successful one. Astaire was an unusual Hollywood star. He was neither particularly handsome nor particularly talented as an actor, but his abilities on the dance floor were enough to ensure that he retained his leading man status throughout the thirties, forties and fifties, playing opposite a succession of ever-younger dancing partners. (Rogers, Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Audrey Hepburn...). As for Hayworth, this film shows what a great find she was, showcasing her beauty, her skill as a dancer and her charisma.
The plot of this film is a pretty thin one, and does not always make a lot of sense. If one examines it too closely, Sheila's treatment of both Robert and Tom would make her seem like a heartless flirt, and I doubt whether in real life the Army would have been quite so relaxed about Robert's attempt to impersonate an officer. The supposed "marriage" between Robert and Sheila would certainly not have been legally binding. This, however, is the sort of musical comedy where one should not take the plot too seriously because it only exists as a flimsy framework to support a succession of song-and-dance routines. And those routines are all very slick and professional. Yes, from a modern perspective they would have looked better in colour, but I doubt if too many people complained in 1941 when black-and-white was the rule and colour the exception, even for spectacular dance shows.
The film was very successful at the box office, which might suggest that audiences of this period did not have the same expectations of a musical as did those of the succeeding generation. The great musicals from the fifties, sixties and seventies- "Show Boat", "The King and I", "West Side Story", "South Pacific", "The Sound of Music", "Fiddler on the Roof", "Cabaret" and so on- offered audiences a coherent plot, often built around a serious theme (racism, gang violence, war or the rise of the Nazis), and a greater sense of emotional involvement with the characters.
The old-school musicals of the thirties and forties, by contrast, tended to be much more escapist, with farcical plots like this one and plenty of song-and-dance. They were intended to offer people a relief from the hardships of the depression and the dangers of wartime, so serious themes were out. It would not have been possible to make a musical about the rise of Nazism until the Nazis had not only risen but also fallen and been safely consigned to the rubbish bin of history. Despite the military theme of "You'll Never Get Rich", and despite the fact that it was made in 1941, not long before America's entry into World War II, there is no real suggestion that Robert, Tom and their comrades in uniform might soon have to go and fight for their country.
The changes which were later to affect the musical genre mean that today it is difficult to judge a film like this objectively. There is plenty of talent involved; Astaire and Hayworth were excellent dancers, Cole Porter a great songwriter and Robert Alton a very capable choreographer. And yet a film like "You'll Never Get Rich", popular though it was in its day, tends to strike us as today as dated and artificial. We just have to remember that that was not how it would have struck the audience for whom it was intended. 6/10
This was the film which first made a major star of Rita Hayworth, cast because Columbia Pictures were looking for a replacement for Ginger Rogers as Fred Astaire's dance partner. The pairing was a successful one. Astaire was an unusual Hollywood star. He was neither particularly handsome nor particularly talented as an actor, but his abilities on the dance floor were enough to ensure that he retained his leading man status throughout the thirties, forties and fifties, playing opposite a succession of ever-younger dancing partners. (Rogers, Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Audrey Hepburn...). As for Hayworth, this film shows what a great find she was, showcasing her beauty, her skill as a dancer and her charisma.
The plot of this film is a pretty thin one, and does not always make a lot of sense. If one examines it too closely, Sheila's treatment of both Robert and Tom would make her seem like a heartless flirt, and I doubt whether in real life the Army would have been quite so relaxed about Robert's attempt to impersonate an officer. The supposed "marriage" between Robert and Sheila would certainly not have been legally binding. This, however, is the sort of musical comedy where one should not take the plot too seriously because it only exists as a flimsy framework to support a succession of song-and-dance routines. And those routines are all very slick and professional. Yes, from a modern perspective they would have looked better in colour, but I doubt if too many people complained in 1941 when black-and-white was the rule and colour the exception, even for spectacular dance shows.
The film was very successful at the box office, which might suggest that audiences of this period did not have the same expectations of a musical as did those of the succeeding generation. The great musicals from the fifties, sixties and seventies- "Show Boat", "The King and I", "West Side Story", "South Pacific", "The Sound of Music", "Fiddler on the Roof", "Cabaret" and so on- offered audiences a coherent plot, often built around a serious theme (racism, gang violence, war or the rise of the Nazis), and a greater sense of emotional involvement with the characters.
The old-school musicals of the thirties and forties, by contrast, tended to be much more escapist, with farcical plots like this one and plenty of song-and-dance. They were intended to offer people a relief from the hardships of the depression and the dangers of wartime, so serious themes were out. It would not have been possible to make a musical about the rise of Nazism until the Nazis had not only risen but also fallen and been safely consigned to the rubbish bin of history. Despite the military theme of "You'll Never Get Rich", and despite the fact that it was made in 1941, not long before America's entry into World War II, there is no real suggestion that Robert, Tom and their comrades in uniform might soon have to go and fight for their country.
The changes which were later to affect the musical genre mean that today it is difficult to judge a film like this objectively. There is plenty of talent involved; Astaire and Hayworth were excellent dancers, Cole Porter a great songwriter and Robert Alton a very capable choreographer. And yet a film like "You'll Never Get Rich", popular though it was in its day, tends to strike us as today as dated and artificial. We just have to remember that that was not how it would have struck the audience for whom it was intended. 6/10