The Petty Girl
Encyclopedia
The Petty Girl is a musical romantic comedy film starring Robert Cummings
Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings , mostly known professionally as Robert Cummings but sometimes as Bob Cummings, was an American film and television actor....

 and Joan Caulfield
Joan Caulfield
Joan Caulfield was an American actress and former fashion model. After being discovered by Broadway producers, she began a stage career in 1943 that eventually led to signing as an actress with Paramount Pictures....

. Cummings portrays painter George Petty
George Petty
George Brown Petty IV was an American pin-up artist. His pin-up art appeared primarily in Esquire and Fawcett Publications's True but was also in calendars marketed by Esquire, True and Ridgid Tool Company. Petty's Esquire gatefolds originated and popularized the magazine device of centerfold...

.

Plot

In New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, George Petty (Robert Cummings) tries to convince car manufacturer B. J. Manton to use pretty women to help advertise his dreary new car model. He is not succeeding when Manton's daughter, the often-married Mrs. Connie Manton Dezlow (Audrey Long
Audrey Long
Audrey Long is an American movie actress, who played supporting roles in films during the 1940s and 1950s....

), interrupts the business meeting, takes a liking to the handsome young artist, and makes herself his patron. Soon, she has furnished him with a lavish apartment, complete with a butler named Beardsley (Melville Cooper
Melville Cooper
George Melville Cooper , best known as Melville Cooper, was a British stage, film and television actor. Among his roles are the cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, and Mr...

). She also talks him into abandoning his cheesecake
Pin-up girl
A pin-up girl, also known as a pin-up model, is a model whose mass-produced pictures see wide appeal as popular culture. Pin-ups are intended for informal display, e.g. meant to be "pinned-up" on a wall...

 paintings in favor of more respectable portraits.

Meanwhile, Victoria Braymore (Joan Caulfield), the youngest professor at Braymore College, attends a conference in New York to defend the school against charges that it is outdated and old-fashioned. She has led a sheltered life, raised by the older professors after the death of her parents (the founders of the college), and is only allowed to go with a chaperone, her friend Dr. Crutcher (Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....

).

George meets Victoria in an art museum. She resists his attempts to become better acquainted, but finally agrees to dinner, provided he finds a date for Dr. Crutcher. Desperate, he gets Beardsley to pretend to be his uncle Ben. The dinner is a disaster; Beardsley gets drunk, Dr. Crutcher thinks she is George's date, and Victoria is distant. Finally, George decides to leave, when Victoria surprises him by accompanying him to a nightclub frequented by artists. When a drink is spilled on her dress, she goes to the powder room, where the attendant offers to iron it. However, the police raid the establishment; in the rush of escaping people, Victoria ends up getting arrested dressed only in her slip. Her picture is published on the front page of the newspaper.

When she gets out of jail, she cuts short her trip and returns to Braymore. George follows her and gets a job as a busboy at the faculty residence. Using the newspaper photograph, he blackmails her into going out with him. Their first two "dates" end badly. Then, when he has her sneak out to pose for a painting in his room, she is seen by nosy Professor Whitman (Mary Wickes
Mary Wickes
Mary Wickes was an American film and television actress.-Career:Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she...

), who misinterprets the situation. Though the other professors are inclined to leniency, Victoria cheerfully quits, finally agreeing with George's view that she is being stifled there.

Victoria goes to George's apartment, where she meets her rival for his affections, Mrs. Dezlow. She tries to persuade George that Mrs. Dezlow is doing the same thing to him that the professors did to her, namely molding him to satisfy her wishes and expectations, but he does not agree. Victoria then sneaks into the art museum and replaces one of the paintings with the one George painted of her in a bathing suit. The resulting publicity lands her a starring role in the burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

. Embarrassed, George gets an injunction preventing her from performing as the "Petty Girl".

Since the injunction only applies to public places, Victoria crashes the stuffy private party being given by Mrs. Dezlow to promote George. There, she, a male quartet, and twelve beautiful women (including an uncredited Tippi Hedren
Tippi Hedren
Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren is an American actress and former fashion model with a career spanning six decades. She is primarily known for her roles in two Alfred Hitchcock films, The Birds and Marnie, and her extensive efforts in animal rescue at Shambala Preserve, an wildlife habitat which she...

 in her film debut), each representing a month, perform a musical number, much to the appreciation of B. J. Manton. The businessman changes his mind about George's initial proposal. George realizes Victoria is right, and they kiss and make up.

Cast

  • Robert Cummings as George Petty
  • Joan Caulfield as Professor Victoria Braymore
  • Elsa Lanchester
    Elsa Lanchester
    Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....

     as Dr. Crutcher
  • Melville Cooper
    Melville Cooper
    George Melville Cooper , best known as Melville Cooper, was a British stage, film and television actor. Among his roles are the cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, and Mr...

     as Beardsley
  • Audrey Long
    Audrey Long
    Audrey Long is an American movie actress, who played supporting roles in films during the 1940s and 1950s....

     as Mrs. Connie Manton Dezlow
  • Mary Wickes
    Mary Wickes
    Mary Wickes was an American film and television actress.-Career:Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she...

     as Professor Whitman
  • Frank Orth
    Frank Orth
    Frank Orth was an American actor born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By 1897, he was performing in vaudeville with his wife, Ann Codee, in an act called "Codee and Orth"...

     as Moody, process server
  • John Ridgely
    John Ridgely
    John Ridgely was an American film character actor with over 100 film credits. He appeared in the 1946 Humphrey Bogart film The Big Sleep as blackmailing gangster Eddie Mars and had a memorable role as a suffering heart patient in the film noir Nora Prentiss .The Chicago, Illinois-born actor...

     as Patrolman

Musical numbers

For all songs, the music was composed by Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the...

, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...

.
  • "Fancy Free", performed by Joan Caulfield (dubbed by an uncredited Carol Richards
    Carol Richards
    Carol Swiedler , was an American singer, radio and television performer, remembered for her duet with Bing Crosby on the hit single "Silver Bells".At the start of her career in her early 20s, Carol Richards won a Bob Hope talent contest, moved...

    )
  • "Calypso Song", performed at the beginning by Movita
    Movita Castaneda
    Maria "Movita" Castaneda is an American actress best known for being the second wife of actor Marlon Brando. She was six years older than Brando. In films, she played exotic women/singers, such as in Flying Down to Rio and Mutiny on the Bounty , of which she is the last surviving cast member....

    , segueing to Caulfield in a daydream sequence (both dubbed by Richards)
  • "I Loves Ya", performed by Cummings (dubbed by Hal Derwin) and Caulfield (Richards)
  • "The Petty Girl", performed by Caulfield (Richards), the Petty Girls, and a male quartet
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