I love classical Hollywood as much as anyone I know, but I am also aware that the films are often mechanical and emotionally distant. Very few reach the level of Dance, Girl, Dance. The plot is great. It is not exactly original, but it seemed that way to me. I was entirely hypnotized. This is due to the direction, characterizations, and acting. This is one of the few Hollywood films of the era directed by a woman, Dorothy Arzner. Generally, you can't tell this fact, except for in the climactic scene of the film, where Maureen O'Hara delivers a powerful feminist speech. The direction is amazing, but it's definitely subtle and sometimes hard to catch. All the characters in this film, especially the lead two, are very well realized. They're people, and we believed them. The acting is the best of all. Lucille Ball may be best known for her television show, but she was a great movie actress, as well. I can't say that I've seen too many of her films, but it would shock me if she was ever better than she is in Dance, Girl, Dance. She is the spark of the film, and Maureen O'Hara is the emotional core. I think that her part represents one of the best female characters to be found in the cinema. O'Hara is simply fabulous as a ballet dancer who has to lower her artistic standards to make a living. And, like I mentioned before, listen for that speech she gives near the end of the film. I hadn't heard of this film before. I had never heard of Dorothy Arzner. I love the feeling that I've made a major cinematic discovery. This is most definitely one of those. 10/10.

It's great to find this Dorothy Arzner movie (she was hired as the director when Roy Del Ruth had a dispute with producer Erich Pommer and resigned) available today on an excellent Warner DVD, although one has the feeling that the somewhat strained, repetitive and even rather dull and boring at times Maureen O'Hara/Louis Hayward story is merely a sop for the censor and that the movie's real appeal is actually directed at third-billed Lucille Ball who is handed all the torchy dialogue and all the sexy stagework. Ball rises to the occasion with bells on and – like the movie's own impatient audiences – we too tend to suffer through O'Hara's scenes (although she doesn't outstay her welcome half as long as Hayward does) and wait impatiently for Ball's return. Yes, thank heavens for Lucille Ball who spices up what would otherwise be a rather dreary screenplay about the ingénue who wants to be a great dancer and the totally irrelevant but even more dreary story of the tipsy millionaire playboy whose wife has understandably divorced him. Similarly, while the burlesque numbers with Lucy are super, super- attractive, I cannot say the same about the ho-hum attempts at "modern" dance. The choreography is uninspired.

Dance Girl Dance tells the story of two redheaded dancers in their salad days. One is Lucille Ball who makes it to the top in burlesque. The other is Maureen O'Hara who has the ambitions and the talent, but not the drive to succeed in classical ballet. She acts as a stooge/foil for Lucy's burlesque act and takes the money as well as the audience jibes that come with it.

Both of them pique the interest of Louis Hayward a soon to be divorced playboy from Virginia Field. In addition even though O'Hara chickened out of the audition, ballet company head Ralph Bellamy thinks she has that something which will make her succeed in ballet.

All these lives are tangled up with each other, but the focus is on the rivalry between Lucy and Maureen. It's friendly at times and not so friendly at others. It gets real nasty when the two have a knock down drag out brawl on stage. The customers at the burlesque sure got their money's worth that night, all these two needed was a pit of mud.

In her memoirs Maureen O'Hara had nothing but kind words to say for Lucille Ball whom she got to be great friends with. She also said that by dint of her training as a Goldwyn Girl, Lucy had quite a head start on her in the dance department. O'Hara recalled the shoot as exhausting but she was proud of the finished product. As well she should have been.

Lucy also met her leading man from her next scheduled picture Too Many Girls and fell in love with him. That would be Desi Arnaz and we all know where that romance went.

O'Hara also enjoyed working for Dorothy Arzner and felt that Arzner brought a special dimension to what is a 'woman's picture' since it's about the friendship between two women. In any event Dance Girl Dance is a work anyone associated with it can be proud of.