Dream Girl (1948 film)

Georgina Allerton is a chronic daydreamer debutante and is in love with Jim Lucas. But Jim is going to marry Georgina’s sister, Miriam. During the wedding ceremony, Georgina daydreams about Jim stopping the wedding to marry her. Ignoring the genuine attentions of Clark Redfield, an honest but poor newspaper reporter who becomes captivated by her.

A couple years pass and Georgina is running an unsuccessful bookshop. Meanwhile, Jim had an unsuccessful venture into publishing so he and Miriam are still living with Mr. and Mrs. Allerton, Miriam's parents. One of the books that Jim passed up whilst in the publishing business has now become a best-seller. Miriam is enraged and the only person sympathetic to Jim is Georgina, who still has feelings for him. Georgina, in an effort to try and get rid of her feelings towards Jim, goes to a nightclub with a man named George Hand. George subsequently invites her to go to Mexico with him.

Clark still has feelings towards Georgina and worries about her being with George Hand, a man with a revolting reputation. So Clark rushes to the nightclub to warn her about George. When Clark arrives, he scolds Georgina but she falls into a daydream where she is in a love triangle with George in Mexico, where he is in a relationship with Georgina and his wife. To end the triangle, Georgina shoots George’s wife. The murder results in Georgina going on the run and becoming a singer in the South Pacific at a honky-tonk. Georgina is so distraught that she commits suicide infront of Jim, who had appeared. Her death in the dream prompts her to finally wake up from it, only to find George propositioning her, which she flatly refuses.

Miriam is tired of living with her parents so leaves Jim. As Jim is preparing to fly to Reno for the divorce, he proposes to Georgina. Georgina then falls into another daydream where she imagines having Jim’s baby on a quiet ranch. Clark is still in love with Georgina though and invited her to see the opera with him. She had reluctantly agreed and now can’t get out of it so she goes despite Jim’s proposal with the promise she’ll join Jim at the airport after the opera has finished. Whilst at the opera, Georgina dreams that she is brilliantly performing in the role of Madama Butterfly, earning Clark’s respect and praise.

After the Opera, Clark brings Georgina to a diner. Georgina is now utterly infatuated with Clark after daydreaming about him praising her. They begin to dance and Clark says that Georgina should stop hiding from reality in her daydreams and tells her to turn them into reality.

In the middle of the night, Mr. and Mrs. Allerton get a phone call from Georgina informing them that she is marrying Clark.

• Betty Hutton as Georgina 'Georgie' Allerton
• Macdonald Carey as Clark Redfield
• Patric Knowles as Jim Lucas
• Virginia Field as Miriam Allerton Lucas
• Walter Abel as George Allerton
• Peggy Wood as Lucy Allerton
• Carolyn Butler as Claire Bleakley
• Lowell Gilmore as George Hand
• Zamah Cunningham as Mme. Kimmelhoff (music teacher)
• Frank Puglia as Antonio
• Georgia Backus as Edna
• Charles Meredith as Charles
• Joesph J. Lilley as Piano Player (uncredited)

• "Drunk with Love" — (Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans) Performed by Betty Hutton
• "One Fine Day (Un Bel Di)" — (Written by Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica) Performed by Betty Hutton (dubbed by Nandine Conner)

Filming took place from April to June 1947. ^[4] Paramount reportedly paid $200,000 for the screen rights to the Elmer Rice play.^[5]

Dream Girl premiered at the Paramount Theatre in New York City on June 16th, 1948 and was opened by Phil Spitalny and his all female band, a novelty at the time.^[6]

Bosley Crowther wrote a negative review for Dream Girl in The New York Times, writing that "In transferring Mr. Rice's play about a light-headed little cookie who spends half of her time in wild day-dreams, Paramount and Mitchell Leisen have done a couple of unforgivable things: they have "Hollywoodized" the whole idea and then have drowned it in a torrent of words." further writing that "Mr. Leisen has forgotten that motion pictures should move and not bog down in soggy stretches of back-and-forth he-and-she talk. No matter how bright the conversation—and some of Mr. Rice's lines are bright—too much sitting down and talking usually makes for a wearying film. In this case, the dialogue, while breezy, has a certain laboriousness which is meagrely compensated by a few chunks of burlesque fantasy."^[5]

Variety gave a positive review, especially of Huttons performance writing that "The screen treatment is naturally, and perhaps properly, broader than the original play. This results primarily from the production and Mitchell Leisen’s direction rather than from the Arthur Sheekman adaptation. Thus, the film turns the play’s humor into outright comedy and sometimes into slapstick." Then writing that "As the self-preoccupied heroine, Betty Hutton gives one of her most skillful performances to date. Besides her familiar vitality and drive, she underscores the comedy in the part and does reasonably well dramatically."^[7]