If you only know Lucille Ball from her phenomenal success as a TV comedienne, Dance, Girl, Dance will be a surprising revelation. Not only can Lucy dance and sing with the best of them (after all, she spent part of the 1930s playing a glamorous showgirl in various Goldwyn musicals), but she handily steals the spotlight from Maureen O'Hara in this good-looking RKO production from 1940. Lucy's big break had come only three years earlier (in Stage Door), but she'd been working in Hollywood for seven years when this enjoyable movie demonstrated the potential for movie stardom that Lucy deserved but never fully achieved. She's a bit brassy and a bit sassy, but she's got a heart of gold as Bubbles, a struggling ballet dancer who takes a skin-baring job in a burlesque club (under the man-teasing stage name of "Tiger Lily White") to boost her chances of show-biz success. She's a saucy gold-digger compared to the modestly forthright Judy (O'Hara), but their friendship sees them through as they share a dangerous dalliance with a millionaire playboy (Louis Hayward) before Judy discovers true love with Steve (Ralph Bellamy) the gentlemanly leader of a ballet company. It's not a classic by any means, but Dance, Girl, Dance is still briskly entertaining, and there's a touch of surprising melodrama involving O'Hara's ballet mentor (played by Maria Ouspenskaya). This movie also has the greater distinction of being directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of the only women (along with Ida Lupino) to break into the male-dominated profession of directing in golden-age Hollywood. Working from a savvy screenplay by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, Arzner gives Dance, Girl, Dance a feminist sensibility that was ahead of its time, later embraced by fans and critics as one of this movie's most enduring qualities. Also included in The Lucille Ball Film Collection, this DVD includes two short subjects from 1940: The 20-minute Vitaphone "two-reeler" "Just a Cute Kid," from a story by Damon Runyon and featuring comedy star Frank Faylen, and "Malibu Beach Party," a pun-filled Merrie Melodies cartoon hosted by "Jack Bunny" and featuring a variety of sun-tanned cameos from animated Hollywood stars. --Jeff Shannon
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