IMDb > Playgirl (1954)

Overview

User Rating:
4.3/10   20 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 44% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Joseph Pevney
Writers:
Robert Blees (writer)
Ray Buffum (story)
Contact:
View company contact information for Playgirl on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
21 April 1954 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama | Film-Noir more
Tagline:
You call her a 'Playgirl'...but this girl plays for keeps! more
Plot:
Nightclub singer Fran Davis is out to educate her out-of-town friend Phyllis Matthews on the ins-and-outs of life in the Big City... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
User Comments:
Shelly Winters unloosed in disorganized cautionary melodrama more (2 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Shelley Winters ... Fran Davis
Barry Sullivan ... Mike Marsh
Colleen Miller ... Phyllis Matthews / Miller
Gregg Palmer ... Tom Bradley
Kent Taylor ... Ted Andrews
Richard Long ... Barron Courtney III
Jacqueline deWit ... Greta Marsh
Dave Barry ... Jonathan Hughes, Photographer
Philip Van Zandt ... Lew Martel
James McCallion ... Paul
Paul Richards ... Wilbur
Myrna Hansen ... Linda
Mara Corday ... Pam
Don Avalier ... Pancho
Carl Sklover ... Cab Driver
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parents
Runtime:
USA:85 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Recording)
Certification:
Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved
Company:
Universal International Pictures (UI) more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Barnard Hughes' film debut. more
Soundtrack:
Lie to Me Baby more

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful.
Shelly Winters unloosed in disorganized cautionary melodrama, 26 September 2003
6/10
Author: bmacv from Western New York

Before they started streaming into New York from Minnesota, they used to come from Kansas (or, in this case, its neighbor to the north). Wide-eyed Colleen Miller gets off the Big Dog from Grand Island, Nebraska to try her hand at the modeling game; she batches it with an old hometown friend, now a nightspot shantoozie (Shelley Winters, who forebodingly sings the old Sophie Tucker number `There'll Be Some Changes Made').

Winters has all the right connections, both high and low (or so she thinks). She's having an affair with the married publisher (Barry Sullivan) of a photomag, Glitter, and can set Miller up for dates with any number of high-rolling but penniless scions of old-money families. But it's Sullivan who finds Miller more enchanting than the needy Winters, who ends up throwing a drunken wingding in which a pistol plays an inopportune part. Though cleared of murder charges, the two gals from the Great Plains, now mortal enemies, find that nobody wants them anymore, either for torch songs or fashion layouts (Winters confides that she spends her days `breaking phonograph records and emptying ice-cube trays').

There's a lot more plot (and many more characters, most of them generic) in this cautionary melodrama about the snares of the Big Town - maybe too much of both (though it's unfair to judge from a showing cut down to fit a commercial television slot). And It's not clear whether the playgirl of the title is Winters or Miller, or if it even matters. Joseph Pevney seems to be reworking material about the interface between show business and crime that he had done two years earlier, and much more successfully, in Meet Danny Wilson (where Winters also appeared). The movie comes off as unfocused and strident. But then that's the price to be paid for unloosing Winters.

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