Dream Girl

Plot

Georgina Allerton is a chronic daydreamer debutante and is in love with Jim Lucas. But Jim is going to marry Georgina’s sister, Miriam. During the wedding ceremony, Georgina daydreams about Jim stopping the wedding to marry her. Ignoring the attentions of Clark Redfield, an honest newspaper reporter who becomes captivated by her.

A couple years pass and Georgina is running an unsuccessful bookshop. Meanwhile, Jim had an unsuccessful venture into publishing so he and Miriam are still living with Mr. and Mrs. Allerton, Miriam's parents. One of the books that Jim passed up whilst in the publishing business has now become a best-seller. Miriam is enraged and the only person sympathetic to Jim is Georgina, who still has feelings for him. Georgina, in an effort to try and get rid of her feelings towards Jim, goes to a nightclub with a man named George Hand. George subsequently invites her to go to Mexico with him.

Clark still has feelings towards Georgina and worries about her being with George Hand, a man with a revolting reputation. So Clark rushes to the nightclub to warn her about George. When Clark arrives, he scolds Georgina but she falls into a daydream where she is in a love triangle with George in Mexico, where he is in a relationship with Georgina and his wife. To end the triangle, Georgina shoots George’s wife. The murder results in Georgina going on the run and becoming a singer in the South Pacific at a honky-tonk. Georgina is so distraught that she commits suicide infront of Jim, who had appeared. Her death in the dream prompts her to finally wake up from it, only to find George propositioning her, which she flatly refuses.

Miriam is tired of living with her parents so leaves Jim. As Jim is preparing to fly to Reno for the divorce, he proposes to Georgina. Georgina then falls into another daydream where she imagines having Jim’s baby on a quiet ranch. Clark is still in love with Georgina though and invited her to see the opera with him. She had reluctantly agreed and now can’t get out of it so she goes despite Jim’s proposal with the promise she’ll join Jim at the airport after the opera has finished. Whilst at the opera, Georgina dreams that she is brilliantly performing in the role of Madama Butterfly, earning Clark’s respect and praise.

After the Opera, Clark brings Georgina to a diner. Georgina is now utterly infatuated with Clark after daydreaming about him praising her. They begin to dance and Clark says that Georgina should stop hiding from reality in her daydreams and tells her to turn them into reality.

In the middle of the night, Mr. and Mrs. Allerton get a phone call from Georgina informing them that she is marrying Clark.

Soundtrack

"Dream Girl" — (Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans)

"Drunk with Love" — (Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans) Performed by Betty Hutton

"One Fine Day (Un Bel Di)" — (Written by Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica) Performed by Betty Hutton (dubbed by Nandine Conner)

Production

Filming took place from April to June 1947. Paramount reportedly paid $200,000 for the screen rights to the Elmer Rice play.

Fellow Paramount actress Joan Caulfield claimed that star Betty Hutton had taken the lead part of Georgina Allerton from her and taunted her for it, Caulfield said that "Paramount had bought Dream Girl for me, it was to be my big starring role. But Betty Hutton was queen of the lot, and she got the picture. She came by my dressing room and screamed at me, "Well, Joan, I'm going to Dream Girl. I cried for days; that part was just made for me."

Release and Reception

Dream Girl premiered at the Paramount Theatre in New York City on June 16th, 1948 and was opened by Phil Spitalny and his all female band, a novelty at the time.

Bosley Crowther wrote a negative review for Dream Girl in The New York Times, writing that, "In transferring Mr. Rice's play about a light-headed little cookie who spends half of her time in wild day-dreams, Paramount and Mitchell Leisen have done a couple of unforgivable things: they have "Hollywoodized" the whole idea and then have drowned it in a torrent of words." further writing that "Mr. Leisen has forgotten that motion pictures should move and not bog down in soggy stretches of back-and-forth he-and-she talk. No matter how bright the conversation—and some of Mr. Rice's lines are bright—too much sitting down and talking usually makes for a wearying film. In this case, the dialogue, while breezy, has a certain laboriousness which is meagrely compensated by a few chunks of burlesque fantasy."

Variety gave a positive review of Leisen's direction and Hutton's performance writing that, "The screen treatment is naturally, and perhaps properly, broader than the original play. This results primarily from the production and Mitchell Leisen’s direction rather than from the Arthur Sheekman adaptation. Thus, the film turns the play’s humor into outright comedy and sometimes into slapstick." Then writing that "As the self-preoccupied heroine, Betty Hutton gives one of her most skillful performances to date. Besides her familiar vitality and drive, she underscores the comedy in the part and does reasonably well dramatically."

The Motion Picture Herald wrote of the film, "The producer did his casting well in nominating Betty Hutton for the title role in this generally amusing comedy based on the successful Broadway stage play of the same name by Elmer Rice. Miss Hutton does well in the main although some of her reactions bear virtually no resemblance to the deportment of ordinary walking around humans. She is supposed to be in a daze most of the time, it is true, but 85 minutes are a lot of minutes to stay that way. Carey is first-class and highly personable."