Let's be realistic.

Good movie but grossly overrated

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

"Doll Face" is a minor musical which would undoubtedly have enjoyed greater appeal if it had not been saddled with a repertoire of pleasant but totally unmemorable songs. Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson can certainly do much better than this.The script, alas, is also no more than routine - and even that is probably an exaggeration of its merits. Louise Hovick's stage play is that old chestnut about the guy who hires a male teacher for his fiancé and suspects the two are two-timing him!However, I must admit that if you're not expecting anything special and your mood is indulgent rather than critical, you will probably enjoy the movie to some extent. It is certainly enthusiastically played by a surprisingly good cast headed by Dennis O'Keefe, Vivian Blaine, Perry Como and Carmen Miranda.All in all, "Doll Face" certainly passes an agreeable - if unmemorable - 80 minutes.

Burlesque queen Doll Face Carroll is dismissed from an audition for a legitimate Broadway show because she lacks culture. Her boss/manager Mike decides that she can get both culture and plenty of publicity by writing her autobiography. He hires a ghost writer to do all the work, but doesn't count on the possibility that Doll Face and her collaborator might have more than a book on their minds. Fast moving movie based on the play. It's a good watch, if dated and unfortunately Carmen Miranda already was looking haggard only in her 30s. She looks like she's in her 50s.

Although it is also loosely based on the life of burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, this uninspired film is much less interesting than the 1962 musical Gypsy with Natalie Wood in the title role. Here, Vivian Blaine struggles through a tedious script, with Dennis O'Keefe blustering his way through as her lover. The best reason to watch this film is to see Perry Como, later to become a crooning television superstar, in a rare film role and Carmen Miranda dancing and camping her way through "Chico Chico." Como and Blaine bring some culture shock to the film when they sing "Dig You Later (A-Hubba Hubba Hubba)," mocking Japan for losing World War II and homogenizing African-American hep-cat style for a white audience. Available on DVD in the 20th Century Fox "Marquee Musicals" series, Doll Face is a curiosity, not a classic.

Gypsy Rose Lee's literary career certainly got a lot of good imitations going. Though not as good as Pal Joey, Doll Face is a pleasant and snappy musical about a stripper who gets involved with her manager and a ghost writer. And who wrote the play on which this is based on, none other than Gypsy Rose Lee. She certainly exploited her literary talent and persona to the max.Vivian Blaine plays our Queen of Burlesque who wants very much to break into Broadway and the legitimate theater. Her manager Dennis O'Keefe encourages her, but it's no go, legitimate producer are afraid of her notorious burlesque reputation. So O'Keefe gets the brilliant idea to have her write a book on her life, but we'll alter it a bit and he gets an author who has a good literary reputation but who hasn't cracked the popular market yet. That would be Stephen Dunne. I think you see the basis for the romantic triangle.Though the three leads do fine the plot is an excuse to display some musical numbers that songwriters Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson wrote for this film. Carmen Miranda is here and just those two words tell you exactly what to expect. And Perry Como is our lead singer and he's got a secondary romance going with Martha Stewart.Which brings me to the big hit of the show A Hubba Hubba Hubba (Dig You Later). It was Como's first million selling record and even given World War II mores I'm a bit shocked. Part of the lyrics involve the celebration of bombing of the Japanese and mind you this film came out on 12/31/45 three months after V-J day. That would be four months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though those atomic bombings are not mentioned we have such lyrics about a B-29 pilot dropping another load for luck and then turning away saying Yuk Yuk. There's still controversy about whether the atomic bomb use was right or not, but there sure ain't reason for any Yuk Yuks.I'd probably rate Doll Face higher because over all it's a pretty good musical. But that Yuk Yuk has not worn well over time. In fact it's downright ghastly.