With: Rita Hayworth (Rusty Parker/Maribelle Hicks), Gene Kelly (Danny McGuire), Lee Bowman (Noel Wheaton), Phil Silvers (Genius), Jinx Falkenburg (herself), Leslie Brooks (Maurine Martin), Eve Arden (Cornelia Jackson)
Director: Charles Vidor
Producer: Arthur Schwartz
Production co: Columbia
Screenplay: Virginia Van Up, Marion Parsonnet, Paul Gangelin. Based on a story by Erwin Gelsey
Photography: Allen M. Davey, Rudolph Maté
Editors: Viola Lawrence
Music: Jerome Kern, Ira Gershwin
REVIEWS

“Charles Vidor’s Technicolor musical laces wartime escapism with raw sex. Rita Hayworth’s bewitching Brooklyn nightclub dancer Rusty finds Broadway and a wealthy husband within her grasp when she wins a modeling contest and becomes the in-demand ‘cover girl’ of the title. The humble pleasures holding her back are Gene Kelly, as Danny the nightclub manager and her devoted paramour, and comedian chum Genius, played by Phil Slivers. The glamour provided by the handsome leads, the wish-fulfilment plot and the gorgeous climatic number are there to add sparkle to the movie’s old-fashioned message about the value of friendship and hard work.”

— Pamela Hutchinson, Sight & Sound.

“Offers plenty of style: Gene Kelly dances up a dream, Rita Hayworth is elegance incarnate, the Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin score – including the marvellous ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ – is tuneful throughout, and the whole thing, especially the comic stuff from Phil Silvers and Eve Arden, is executed with considerable brio. And Rudolph Maté's Technicolor photography is faultless.”

— Time Out
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Restoration by Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Nelson
Thursday, 3 May, 6:00pm

Canterbury
Monday, 21 May, 7:30pm

Palmerston North
Monday, 28 May, 6:00pm

Timaru
Tuesday, 26 June, 7:00pm

Whanganui
Monday, 6 August, 7:00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 25 September, 8:15pm

Auckland
Monday, 15 October, 6:30pm
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Wellington
Monday, 26 November, 6:15pm

For more Rita Hayworth, see also:
RITA!  >>
Only Angels Have Wings >>