She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) The 1950s were a little bit racier than most people are willing to give it credit for, and you could point at movies such as She’s Working Her Way Through College as an example. In many ways, it’s a bog-standard movie musical representative of the times, as it features a small-town college putting together a show and movie viewers seeing the bits and pieces of the musical through the rehearsal process. But it also features Virginia Mayo as a burlesque star going straight as a college student with literary ambitions. For post-1980 viewers, much of the film’s notoriety would come from seeing Ronald Reagan play an academic (!) who, in a drunken stupor (!!), ineffectually tries to punch another man he suspects of hobnobbing with his wife. Later on, we also have Reagan delivering a speech of tolerance in the face of a burlesque star in their midst, which will strike some as mildly tolerant and others as a bit hypocritical. Anyway—Mayo is great, the tone is amiable, the comedy has its moments and later presidential history has made the film a bit weightier than it used to be. Worth a look, frankly, if only for a combination of Mayo’s achievements and Reagan’s somewhat memorable role.