Posting a short entry today. If you were disappointed that Cyd Charisse‘s character from Silk Stockings never got to wear furs, well, Cyd was a bit more fortunate in other roles. That includes this entry from 1958, Party Girl.
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Party Girl (blu-ray)
Genre: Drama
Format: Blu-Ray
Party Girl – The Film
Party Girl is a late 50's crime film about a showgirl, Cyd, becoming involved with a mob lawyer played by Robert Taylor after meeting him at a… party! Yes, they subtly worked it into the very title of the film. I don't really have much else to say about it because that first sentence is pretty much all you need to know. Girl meets boy, boy is mobbed-up lawyer, boy regrets his actions via nagging of girl, mob politely suggests boy not go by threatening to throw acid on girls face… everyone lives happily ever after.
Party Girl – The Furs
Cyd plays Vicki Gaye, one of a group of showgirls that are cordially invited to a mob party. Gaye is a successful enough showgirl that she's got a couple of furs in the closet.
She's not the only one. As the girls arrive, there's a variety of furs on display.
Sadly the best of them, this fox, isn't on Cyd's character.
Vicki wears this silver fox-trimmed mink coat. The trim is nice and shot to make the remainder of the coat unnoticeable.
At the party, she meets Tommy Farrell, mob lawyer extraordinaire, who eventually escorts her home, all chivalrously. On the lousy timing front, they arrive to find her roomie has committed suicide and end up at the police station, where Tommy's lawyer powers come in handy.
They eventually end up in a tender moment where she falls asleep on his couch, and he covers her up with the silver fox-trimmed coat.
Later Vicki finds out about his mob lawyer-ness and starts the nagging, confronting him in his office in this fox-trimmed coat.
After witnessing him in action at a trail where he successfully defends a mob goon, she ratchets up the nagging about his vocation at a bar afterward, fortunately still wearing the coat. The fur rather nicely accents Cyd's face.
The silver fox makes one final appearance later in the film. They visit the bridge where Tommy was partially crippled as a kid. Real mood-setter, I agree.
Party Girl is… the update I posted because I didn't finish editing the clip of Times Square Lady in time. At best, serviceable, and it doesn't shine in runtime either, really. Still, the close-ups of Cyd Charisse in her two fox coats are very agreeable.
Fur Runtime: approx 7 minutes
Film Runtime: 99 minutes
On-Screen Fur Ratio: 7%
I can vividly remember watching this film several years ago. The girls walk in all swathed in furs and i fill with excitement; then i had to shout at the screen in desperation, “oh please no, do not take them off!” But they took absolutely no notice. I really wanted the girl in the white fox to stay on screen but Cyd in a silver fox trimmed coat was a rather nice sight to behold.
Agreed, I definitely would have swapped the blonde’s coat and Cyd’s silver fox. It was a bit worthy of “marquee” value. Better yet I would have given Cyd the white fox and the silver fox for the other scenes… best of both worlds there.
Rather like Butterfield 8, although i preferred the lynx collared coat she put back in the wardrobe to the mink.
On a tangent. Yesterday i watched Q planes (1939) and it contained a continuity error involving fur. Valerie Hobson is stood in the background and you can distinctly see her remove a fox cape and toss it on a sofa. When the film goes to a close up shot of her she is seen removing it again.
Butterfield 8, a film I would post here… if it had been about a fox or lynx fur coat, heh.
My most memorable continuity error (outside of the one in Darktown Strutters most recently) was in an odd place, the 1993 film Necronomicon. An anthology of Lovecraft-y tales, the first part had Belinda Bauer in a period white fox stole, which is to say… “mask” and paws attached. Not fond of that in any case, but it only served to highlight the fact that, somewhat into her appearance, the “direction” of the stole swapped depending on what angle she was being filmed from. The fox was up in one shot, and down in the other.
Admittedly, you probably had to be looking really hard at the stole to notice. And… admittedly… I was…