Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Cover Girl Blu-ray Movie Review

Judging a 'Cover' by its Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 11, 2012

I had a psychic reader tell me once that I was Jerome Kern reincarnated. Aside from the fact that we share initials and that I am also a musician, I found this somewhat hard to believe, especially in light of the fact that this same psychic reader told me it would be several more lifetimes before I would overcome my “debilitating stage fright”, which is something I have never suffered from, for better or worse. But this little nugget of faux revelatory information at least led me to delve more thoroughly into Kern’s music. Like most people, I was passingly familiar with Kern’s compositional output, probably mostly with Show Boat, simply because its best known songs get performed so often. When I started playing jazz as a teenager, I had taken the requisite “tour” through Kern’s standards which had been ported over to the jazz repertoire, including the wonderful voyage through the circle of fifths (with occasional detour via a tritone) known as “All The Things You Are”. But the contributions Kern made to the Great American Songbook are probably unmatched by any of his general contemporaries, names perhaps a bit better known to the general public like George Gershwin or Richard Rodgers. Kern actually paved the way for both of those men, both compositionally but also career wise, as Kern was one of the first composers to matriculate from the stage to the screen. By the time he wrote the song score for 1944’s Cover Girl (with George’s lyricist brother, Ira Gershwin), Kern was firmly established as one of the most successful songwriters of all time, whether those songs be for Broadway or the Silver Screen. What’s rather interesting about Cover Girl is how it has all the hallmarks of a classic MGM production—down to Arthur Schwartz as producer—and yet it was actually a Columbia film. It could be reasonably argued in fact that Cover Girl in its own way paved the way for what would soon become the halcyon days of the musical on the Metro lot, including the ascension of one of the stars most firmly associated with that era, Gene Kelly. While Cover Girl was designed as a showcase for Columbia’s Rita Hayworth, it may in fact be Kelly’s contributions, along with those of Kern and Gershwin, that most memorably elevate the film above many other musicals of the era.

Even though it's a Columbia film, Cover Girl follows the well worn MGM musical trope of purporting to be a “backstage” musical, though of course its depiction of life on the boards is highly fanciful, to say the least. Rita Hayworth portrays Rusty Parker, a chorine in a quasi- burlesque show who has an on again, off again romance with choreographer Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). When Rusty is seen by an important magazine publisher named Coudair (Otto Krueger), he chooses her to be his new “cover girl”, which then catapults Rusty into Broadway stardom. It turns out Coudair had long ago seen, and briefly been engaged to, Rusty’s Grandmother, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Rusty. (As a Frances Farmer fanatic, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity of this plot point of Cover Girl to what is generally considered Farmer’s best film, Come and Get It. Like that Howard Hawks-William Wyler outing where Farmer portrays both a mother and a daughter, Hayworth here essays both the Grandmother and Rusty roles. In both films a man who fell in love with the older generation’s woman then repeats his affections with the younger girl, to a greater or lesser degree in each film.)

This is the first film where Kelly (and his frequent collaborator Stanley Donen) were given free reign over the choreography, something that up to that point MGM itself hadn’t been willing to do (this film changed that, another reason it’s so notable). There are several fantastic set pieces here, including a huge dance along a cityscape that obviously presages Kelly’s iconic work in Singin’ in the Rain (which is almost due on Blu-ray). There’s another kind of connection to Singin’ in the Rain, in that there’s a “third wheel” in this film as well, a sort of proto-Donald O’Connor character, in this film named Genius and portrayed by none other than future Sgt. Bilko, Phil Silvers. In fact the closing shot of Hayworth, Kelly and Silvers running toward the camera is incredibly redolent of another iconic shot with Debbie Reynolds, Kelly and O’Connor from the later film.

The Kern-Gershwin score is rather remarkable in and of itself. Aside from quite a few pastiche numbers, one of the most famous Kern songs of all, “Long Ago (and Far Away)”, was written for this film. (The song received an Oscar nomination, one of a rather incredible 11 Best Song nominations doled out that year. “Swingin’ on a Star” from Going My Way took home the prize.) The large music department adapting the score included Carmen Dragon (father of Darryl Dragon who later achieved fame as “The Captain” in The Captain and Tennille), with additional orchestrations done by popular bandleader Paul Weston. (Dragon and musical supervisor Morris Stoloff took home that year's Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.) The entire film has the sort of lush, glamorous quality that came to define the MGM musicals. Columbia was never as well known for its musical films as MGM was, but Cover Girl proves quite admirably the studio could do them as well as anyone given the right talent.

Cover Girl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cover Girl is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Twilight Time has had a really fantastic batting average with their releases, all of which are dependent upon masters provided to them by Columbia and Fox from the studios' assets catalog. The good news is Columbia (Sony) and Fox have been two of the most reliable studios out there in terms of offering quality product both in terms of catalog releases and newer offerings. But even the best sometimes falter, and that's unfortunately what has happened with Cover Girl, which has a problematic presentation on a number of levels. This Technicolor musical evidently was not archivally preserved well and neither a decent negative nor an IP was available for this transfer. What we have, therefore, is a presentation with severe density issues and color fluctuations that vary almost from instant to instant. At times colors are quite vivid, even if they don't have that traditional Technicolor "pop", but then they fade and variously skew toward either the yellow, brown or magenta side of things (the fact that there's such a disparity is indicative of some of the issues here). This transfer is also incredibly grainy, certainly much more than it would have been in its original theatrical exhibition (and not just with regard to the more easily explained optical elements, which of course would have added grain). (It's interesting to note that Twilight Time just posted an older Robert A. Harris article from 2008 about "yellow layer failure, vinegar syndrome and miscellaneous musings" on its Facebook page. If the yellow layer had failed or faded here, a telecine colorist may have tried boosting it, which would account for the graininess and at least some of the color disparities. This is probably much the same thing that happened, to a lesser degree, on Twilight Time's release of Bell, Book, and Candle.) Contrast is problematic as well throughout the presentation. Overall things are at acceptable levels in terms of clarity, but "acceptable" seems anything but that when Twilight Time has already set the bar so very, very high for the bulk of its releases. In fairness here, the bottom line is that Sony's Grover Crisp is known for being a stickler for quality in terms of Columbia-Sony's HD releases, and one has to assume this is simply the best the studio could do given the condition of the elements.

Cover Girl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cover Girl's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix is generally quite good, though it very occasionally shows signs of minor distortion in the midrange (listen carefully at the beginning of the film to the underscore accompanying the credits). Aside from this fairly picayune complaint, things sound quite spry here, with good fidelity and no obvious clipping in the upper ranges. While there's the expected boxiness to the sound, overall things sound decently full and clarity is quite excellent.

Cover Girl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is the rare Twilight Time release with no supplements, not even an isolated score.

Cover Girl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cover Girl is a wonderful, if fairly rote, musical that is perhaps more important for how clearly it presages so much of what was to come with the vaunted MGM musical as for anything it does itself. This Blu-ray is a rare misfire from Twilight Time, though one has to assume the elements were in such bad shape that this was simply the best that could be done with them. Lovers of the film will no doubt still probably want to pick up this Blu-ray, for even with its flaws, it still outshines the most recent DVD release.