Betty Grable's last movie suffers under the leaden direction of Nunnally Johnson. Johnson wrote and produced How to Marry a Millionaire which also starred Grable, but directing these things are harder than they look.
It doesn't help that it's not a musical when it should be, or that Marilyn Monroe turned down the lead and they used Sheree North.
Grable was getting a bit old and doesn't have a character to play - North isn't much of a performer, but doesn't have a character to play either. Compare it with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes a movie which has some similarities to this... two dames in a strange environment, meeting Tom Noonan and Charles Coburn. The lead gals were very different (Jane Russell would've been fab in this).
North does a dance towards the end and she's sensational - and you go "they should have had her doing that all the way through".
And Johnson has no fun with the culture clash of showgirls at college. I mean, you think it would be obvious - show girls with street smarts clashing with boys with book smarts - but they do little with the situation.
Robert Cummings, normally made for this material, seems odd in a crew cut as a perenial student and there's no life win Tom Noonan.
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