By the time she signed on for Meet Me After the Show (1951), Grable had, at age 35, summited the apex of her career and was looking at the downward slope, an indicator of both changing tastes and her own fatigue. While the project was in preproduction, and known as Don't Fence Me In, Cary Grant was announced as Grable's probably leading man; that Macdonald Carey was cast in that role is an indicator of its loss of prestige. Directed with verve by Richard Sale and enlivened by dance numbers choreographed by Jack Cole, Meet Me After the Show offered a frothy show-behind-the-show romantic four-hander involving husband and wife Carey and Grable spicing up their marriage with the intervention of interested parties Rory Calhoun and Lois Andrews. (Grable had lobbied unsuccessfully to have Dale Robertson cast in the role that went to Calhoun.) Turning up in smaller roles are Irene Ryan, a decade away from attaining pop culture immortality as Granny Clampett on the TV sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, and dancer Gwen Verdon, who pops up for the number "No Talent Joe"; then best known as Jack Cole's assistant, the vibrant, redheaded specialty dancer would enjoy breakout success on Broadway in 1953 in Cole Porter's Can-Can.
Meet Me After the Show proved to be another feather in Betty Grable's cap but the Girl with the Million Dollar Legs demanded a much-needed break, dropping out of Richard Sale's The Girl Next Door (1953) and bequeathing her role to June Haver. (As fate would have it, that production marked Haver's Hollywood swan song as well.) Grable was lured out of retirement with the hope of a lead role in Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1952) but she was eclipsed by the younger Marilyn Monroe. Defying Hollywood gossip that maintained there was a rivalry between them, Grable urged Monroe on, saying "I've had mine - now go get yours." Grable and Monroe acted together in Jean Negulesco's hit How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and were slated to reteam for Nunnally Johnson's How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955) - a precursor of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), in which the stars would impersonate college boys to outwit a gangland murderer - but Monroe backed out of the deal at the last minute and was replaced with Sheree North. Retired from films by 1956, Grable died of lung cancer in Santa Monica, California, on July 2, 1973, at the age of 56.
By Richard Harland Smith
Sources:
Betty Grable: The Girl with the Million Dollar Legs by Tom McGee (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2009)
Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto (Cooper Square Press, 2001)
