Thu 2 Oct 2025
Archived Movie Review: MEET ME AFTER THE SHOW (1951).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[4] Comments
MEET ME AFTER THE SHOW. 20th Century Fox, 1951. Betty Grable, Macdonald Carey, Rory Calhoun, Eddie Albert. Screenplay:Richard Sale & Mary Loos. Director: Richard Sale.
A rift develops between the star of a Broadway musical and her producer-director husband. When amnesia strikes, she heads straight for Miami, with seven years missing from her life – or so she says.
Pure corn. On the other hand, Betty Grable seems ten times the glamorous movie star in this creaky vehicle than she did seven years earlier, in Pin-Up Girl [reviewed here]. Her strength was in musical comedy, and she made the most of it.
— Reprinted from Movie.File.1, March 1988.
October 3rd, 2025 at 4:53 pm
The supporting cast alone tells you all. The studio had little confidence, so they put MacDonald Carey up there with Betty Grable. Eddie Albert, a terrific actor, was never a top star, so his name comes under Rory Calhoun, who is billed more or less correctly. Zanuck and his Fox team threw this thing away.
October 4th, 2025 at 2:57 am
Sale and his wife Loos mostly made the equivalent of B pictures even though B’s officially stopped being made around 1954, the last one with Wayne Morris. A couple of classics like TICKET TO TOMAHAWK, ABANDON SHIP, and SUDDENLY, a lot of mediocre fare like GENTLEMAN PREFER BRUNETTES and FIRE OVER AFRICA.
Not one of Grable’s top films, but she could still hold her own in bigger films like HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE with Bacall and Monroe (Rory Calhoun too). Calhoun (TOMAHAWK) and Carey (AFRICA) both worked with Sale in other films so it is old home week.
October 4th, 2025 at 11:58 pm
David, I believe Grable is there to protect Marilyn, and the rage for Bacall has not disappeared but subsided. Lauren Bacall is actually the fulcrum; Marilyn and Grable are comic relief. Spencer Tracy to Clark Gable.
October 12th, 2025 at 2:58 am
Barry,
No argument about Grable’s role, but she was still a big enough name to anchor MM and carry part of the comic relief in the Eve Arden/Joan Blondell role. By the end of the decade she was pretty much relegated to rare television appearances like the one she did with Lucille Ball on the hour long I LOVE LUCY color specials.