Has Anybody Seen My Gal

Gigi Perreau and Charles Coburn cut the rug in Has Anybody Seen My Gal

Douglas Sirk's Has Anybody Seen My Gal, from 1952, is more fun than a copy of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. A celebration of 1920s Americana, there lurks beneath its glittering surface (as in most Sirk films) a denunciation of American materialism and intolerance. Yet, the film also functions superbly as light entertainment. I think it is the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas.

Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie, rising newcomers at Universal Pictures, are the nominal stars of the film, but Charles Coburn is the film's cynosure and chief asset. A millionaire without an heir, Coburn tracks down the family of a lost love and becomes their anonymous benefactor. He moves to the Vermont town where they live and ingratiates himself with the family in order to surmise if their newfound wealth has changed them. Coburn's beloved's granddaughter (Laurie) is going steady with soda jerk Hudson, but her family's newfound fortune causes them to pooh pooh the impoverished suitor. Coburn helps steer the couple through troubled waters towards a happy ending. The mysterious benefactor who helps unite star-crossed lovers was a familiar trope of Victorian literature and spawned many variations in Hollywood. particularly George Arliss' starring vehicles in the twenties and thirties. 

With five or so small scale musical numbers, Has Anybody Seen My Gal often feels like a poor man's Singin' in the Rain. Yet, there are a few Sirkian moments that even that splendid musical does not approach. Especially one in which Laurie's character and her younger sister watch a Christmas snowfall through a picture window. Laurie's character has had a quarrel with her lover and, in contrast to her sister's holiday joy, throws herself on her bed for a good cry. The shot anticipates the use of a picture window at Rock Hudson's cabin in All That Heaven Allows. In both cases, nature's peaceful splendor is contrasted with a character's inner turmoil.

Yet, one does not have to have even heard of Douglas Sirk to appreciate this joyous film. Coburn's performance is one of his most entertaining and ebullient. The signifiers of the roaring twenties, speakeasies, racoon coats and flappers doing the Charleston, are all in evidence. The sparkling Technicolor surfaces of the film belie its message that all that glitters is not gold. As with Sirk's later Universal melodramas starring Hudson, the luxe recreation of American life masks a cautionary theme. Film buffs will relish the memorable cameo by James Dean as a demanding soda fountain customer. Has Anybody Seen My Gal is a film for all but the most intransigent cynic. 

James Dean