Dorothy Arzner

(On Cable TV, November 2021) One of Lucille Ball’s better early starring roles, Dance, Girl, Dance has her as a burlesque dancer, competing with a higher-class ballerina (Maureen O’Hara, playing up her distinguished persona) for the affections of a rich heir. In many ways, it’s a very conventional film of its time: Broadway stories were exceptionally commonplace in 1930s Hollywood, and it takes a while for the result to distinguish itself. But it eventually does in its third act — through a (now tame, but then-daring) burlesque striptease from Ball, through a memorable onstage fight between its two female leads, through a script that clearly places the focus on its female characters, and perhaps most visibly through director Dorothy Arzner’s unimpressed depiction of the men attending strip shows. That’s not too bad for a 1940 film — and as a piece of Ball’s filmography, it’s clearly an essential.