Dance, Girl, Dance

Arzner’s stirring comedy-drama about a group of women hoping to find success as dancers – and, perhaps, husbands – in New York.

  • Director

    Dorothy Arzner

  • With

    Maureen O’Hara, Lucille Ball, Louis Hayward, Ralph Bellamy

  • USA 1940. 90min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    U

About a group of women struggling to make it as dancers in New York, Arzner’s comedy-drama centres on the rivalry between O’Hara’s idealistic would-be ballerina and Ball’s gold-digging burlesque dancer, the tensions exacerbated by their respective relationships with wealthy playboy Hayward. O’Hara’s diatribe against a leering audience saw the film later proclaimed as a proto-feminist critique of the male gaze.

The screening on Wednesday 3 August will be introduced by Pamela Hutchinson, film critic and historian.