Girl Crazy

Girl Crazy (1943)

The Big Musical with Broadway Flair and a Western Air!

Rich kid Danny Churchill has a taste for wine, women and song, but not for higher education. So his father ships him to an all-male college out West where there's not supposed to be a female for miles. But before Danny arrives, he spies a pair of legs extending out from under a stalled roadster. They belong to the Dean's granddaughter, Ginger Gray, who is more interested in keeping the financially strapped college open than falling for Danny's romantic line. At least at first...

Date of release
1943-11-26
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (25)
Runtime
1h 39m
Genres
Comedy, Romance, Music
Director
Norman Taurog

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Girl Crazy is a 1943 American musical film starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. Produced by the Freed Unit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it is based on the stage musical Girl Crazy – which was written by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. It was the last of Garland and Rooney's nine movies as co-stars, the pair appearing only once more together on film, with Garland as a guest star in 1948's Words and Music in which Rooney played songwriter Lorenz Hart.

Production

Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell were originally announced to star in the film as a follow-up to Broadway Melody of 1940.

MGM's Roger Edens – the Freed Unit's musical arranger and associate producer, and Garland's mentor – convinced Garland, who was eager to play more adult roles, that one more pairing with Rooney would be a good idea.

Production began in early January 1943 with Busby Berkeley as director. Berkeley had previously directed Rooney and Garland in Babes in Arms (1939), Strike Up the Band (1940) and Babes on Broadway (1941), their biggest hits together, but he was fired for a number of reasons.

Norman Taurog took over for Berkeley in early February. His calmer style of direction contrasted sharply with Berkeley's. Film historian Frank N. Magill wrote that Taurog's work "reflected the beginnings of a new style in film musicals", in which the musical numbers were used for the development of the film's characters.

Girl Crazy was partly filmed on location in the desert near Palm Springs, California.

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