SWEATER GIRL (1942)

 

SWEATER GIRL is the perfect B-movie. It has everything: singing, dancing, comedy, romance, mystery, and murder. Not to mention sweaters. The film opens with top-billed Eddie Bracken singing the following lyrics: 

When the sweater girls parade around the campus,

Talk about your heavenly scenes.

Why, they get a better hand than a big brass band,

Or a company of Marines.

I don't want to look at shiny, shiny medals,

Or at twenty-one guns ablaze.

But when the sweater girls parade around the campus,

Mama, give me those, 

Give me those,

Give me those college days!

How's that for subtlety?

Among the attributes already mentioned, the film also contains a little bit of high drama when the mystery is solved and the murderer is revealed. Put all of these components together, and what we have is a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience. 

Bracken plays Jack Mitchell, a student at Midvale College. He and several other students are rehearsing for a musical revue, which is where his opening song is performed. Featured in the revue are acrobatic dancer Susan Lawrence (June Preisser), singer Louise Menard (Betty Jane Rhodes), and songwriter Johnny Arnold (Johnnie Johnston). Susan is romantically interested in Jack and keeps trying to get his attention. The two of them are practicing an adagio number for the revue. Jack, however, is attracted to Louise, who happens to be involved with Susan's older brother, Martin (Phillip Terry), a professor at the college. In the midst of all the rehearsing and romancing, two murders take place, and Jack and Susan team up to solve the mystery.

June Preisser and Eddie Bracken

The film is a wonderful showcase for Eddie Bracken, at the time an increasingly popular contract player at Paramount Pictures. His bubbly co-star, June Preisser, was appearing in one of two films she made at the studio. Miss Preisser had started her film career at MGM, playing opposite Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in the musical hits BABES IN ARMS (1939) and STRIKE UP THE BAND (1940), but was let go by that studio. Betty Jane Rhodes was a talented, popular singer who made a handful of films for Universal and Paramount. The music in SWEATER GIRL was composed by Jule Styne and Frank Loesser. The film has the distinction of introducing the hit song I Don't Want To Walk Without You, performed by Miss Rhodes. 

Also featured are distinguished stage and film actress Frieda Inescort and Swedish actor Nils Asther. Mr. Asther had been in films since 1916 and was once known as "the male Greta Garbo". He worked with Miss Garbo in the silents WILD ORCHIDS and THE SINGLE STANDARD. Phillip Terry was a hard-working young character actor who is probably best remembered for being married to Joan Crawford from 1942 to 1946. Another familiar face for low-budget movie fans is Minerva Urecal, whose deadpan delivery was a welcome addition to more than two hundred films.

High drama with a low budget. Frieda Inescort and Nils Asther

The main attraction for me is June Preisser. This delightful actress didn't make many films in her brief career, which is a real shame. She was not only gorgeous, but she was a talented acrobat and dancer. She had a signature acrobatic trick that she performed in almost every one of her films. She would fall forward onto her torso, and then sort of roll herself over and upward. In SWEATER GIRL, she gets to strut her stuff beautifully in the adagio dance with Eddie Bracken. After leaving MGM, all of her subsequent films were in the B category. One is especially memorable: MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM (1944), a comedy/mystery/musical made at Universal, where she is featured in a singing group called The Three Jazzybelles, a takeoff on The Andrews Sisters. Miss Preisser ended up working for Monogram in a series of films featuring characters known as The Teenagers. I've only seen a few of these lively little flicks. Despite their low budgets, they provide good entertainment and good work by Miss Preisser. By the end of the 1940's, she was out of the business. I can understand that she may have been difficult to cast in spite of her talent and good looks. June Preisser never seemed to mature as an actress in the same way as her contemporaries, such as Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin. She always came across as a thirteen-year-old kid with a knowing look on her face, a slightly unsettling combination. She was still cast as a teenager when in her late twenties.

Lovely June Preisser

Eddie Bracken, of course, went on to star in some of the best comedies of the 1940's, including THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944) and HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO (1944), both directed by Preston Sturgess. He would continue working in films and television well into the 1990's. SWEATER GIRLS was directed by William Clemens, who worked primarily as a director, but also as a producer and an editor on mostly second features throughout the 1930's and 40's.