Still image from the 1954 film Give a Girl a Break.

Give a Girl a Break

Directed by Stanley Donen

Three young dancers vie for a starring role on Broadway.

1954 1h 21m Musical TV-G

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CAST
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0

Stanley Donen, Director
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Stanley Donen
Director

1

Marge Champion, Madelyn Corlane
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Marge Champion
Madelyn Corlane

2

Gower Champion, Ted Sturgis
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Gower Champion
Ted Sturgis

3

Debbie Reynolds, Suzy Doolittle
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Debbie Reynolds
Suzy Doolittle

4

Helen Wood, Joanna Moss
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Helen Wood
Joanna Moss

5

Bob Fosse, Bob Dowdy
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Bob Fosse
Bob Dowdy

FULL SYNOPSIS

At rehearsals for a new Broadway musical revue, Give a Girl a Break , harried young director-choreographer Ted Sturgis is dressed down by the temperamental star, Janet Hallson, who then breaks her contract and walks out. Ted's former dancing partner, Madelyn Corlane, is proposed as a possible replacement for Janet, but Ted insists she has given up show business, and claims that he can turn the right girl into a star. Ted lets the newspapers know that he is looking for an unknown actress to replace Janet, and a throng of hopeful performers shows up at the theater. Ted's assistant, Bob Dowdy, is immediately smitten with pretty young dancer Suzy Doolittle, while the show's composer, Leo Belney, prefers the elegant Joanna Moss. When Ted and Bob go into producer Felix Jordan's office, they are surprised to see Madelyn, who has decided to make a comeback. Ted agrees to audition the three women the following morning, and privately tells Felix that Madelyn left him two years ago for another man. Suzy runs home and shares the good news with her mother, who insists that Suzy skip the date she made with Bob and prepare for her audition. Meanwhile, Joanna rushes to her home and tells all the neighbors in her apartment building that she is going to star in the show. Joanna's husband, Burton Bradshaw, informs her that he has just been offered a job as head of the music department at a small university in Minnesota, but she refuses to leave New York. Madelyn, meanwhile, tells her bo...


VIDEOS
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Applause, Applause
Movie Clip
It Happens Every Time...
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Our United States
Movie Clip
Original Trailer
Trailer

ARTICLES
New York dancer and future superstar choreographer and director Bob Fosse had idolized Fred Astaire but wanted to be the next Gene Kelly. Had he been born twenty years earlier, he might have become a big star, but when he arrived in Hollywood to be in Give a Girl a Break (1953), MGM was at the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood, a time when musicals were losing popularity and the industry as a whole was losing viewers to television. Studios were cutting stars from their roster and downgrading productions in an attempt to save money. Give a Girl a Break is one such example. Originally intended to be a major MGM film starring Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Ann Miller, the unavailability of the stars and the changes occurring at the studio turned it into a much smaller production for MGM's young star Debbie Reynolds, the dancing team of Marge and Gower Champion, and the newly arrived Fosse, who had quit the Broadway production of Pal Joey to come to Hollywood. As Martin Gottfried wrote in his book, All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse, "There were residual elements of the big project it had once been, a score by Burton Lane and Ira Gershwin [their only collaboration] , for instance, direction by Stanley Donen and musical supervision by Saul Chaplin. The screenwriters, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, were estimable too, although in this instance they had written a slender story involving three unknown actresses competing for a Broadway role tha...

NOTES

The opening credits read "Starring Marge and Gower Champion." A August 10, 1951 item in Hollywood Reporter's "Rambling Reporter" column stated that Gene Kelly and Carleton Carpenter would appear in the film. A modern source also claims that Kelly was slated to star in the film, along with Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Ann Miller.

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