Lucille Ball shines in a strong supporting role.
If ever there was a scene stealer, it’s Lucille Ball in “Dance, Girl, Dance.” She’s not the star but she’s the one you remember in a performance 12 years before she introduced the TV character Lucy Ricardo that would give her the super stardom Hollywood never did.<br /><br />The film focuses on two dancers from a troupe of young women making ends meet as showgirls in nightclubs. Judy (Maureen O’Hara) is a serious ballet student who aspires to bring her art to the public. Bubbles (Ball) is a brassy dame who uses her sensuality to get ahead. She knows exactly what the male audience wants to see and she delivers.<br /><br />The nightclub where they are performing is raided to break up illegal gambling in the back room and the girls haven’t been paid. Wealthy playboy Jimmy Harris (Louis Hayward) takes up a collection among the patrons to pay the dancers. Judy is impressed with his unsolicited kindness and gallantry, and they become friends.<br /><br />Bubbles, with her eye more on Jimmy’s money than his personality, succeeds in luring him away from Judy and then steals a job from her as a bump-and-grind dancer/stripper in a burlesque show. Later, she has Judy hired as a kind of stooge warm-up to her flashy act. The nearly all-male audience responds to the fully-clothed ballet interlude as expected, with catcalls, booing, and demands for Bubbles to return.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Judy’s ballet teacher Madame Lydia Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya) arranges for Judy to meet with an influential ballet impresario (Ralph Bellamy) at his studio. From the reception room, Judy can see the dress rehearsal for an elaborate ballet. This subplot becomes a parallel backstage story of personal lives intertwined with the trials of show business<br /><br />The film is helmed by the only female director working in Hollywood at the time, Dorothy Arzner. She takes time showing the ballet, which incorporates Ziegfeld pizzazz and Busby Berkeley patterns into traditional ballet movement and an en-pointe solo.<br /><br />“Dance, Girl, Dance” is rather stodgy. O’Hara plays a redheaded Irish immigrant with a fiery temper (we’re told). That supposed temper emerges only once, although there were many opportunities. Throughout the film, Judy is idealistic, rolls with the tough punches, perseveres, and takes abuse. She is strangely naive about burlesque and seems to have no idea that her toe dance is not the preferred fare of ogling male eyes. O’Hara, who is so dazzling in her Technicolor films, doesn’t convey the same vivaciousness in black and white, and her mousy portrayal leaves plenty of room for Ball to dominate.<br /><br />With her wisecracks, sidelong glances, wriggling hips, and thrust bosom, Ball’s Bubbles is as much of a sexual woman as Hollywood would allow in the Production Code era. Never purely villainous, Bubbles is witty, ambitious, and very much aware of how to use her physical attributes to get ahead in a tough business. She has two burlesque solos, “Oh, Mother, What Do I Do Now?” in which huge off-stage fans blow off assorted articles of her clothing, and the jazzy “Jitterbug Bite,” in which she shimmies and shakes in a white fur coat. For a supporting role, Bubbles is a big showcase for Ball’s talents.<br /><br />Hayward is so bland a leading man that it’s hard to accept his Jimmy as the romantic focus of both Judy and Bubbles. He’s elegant and good- looking, yes, but never really lights up the screen. How wonderful if Cary Grant could have been cast. The role could have been expanded to take advantage of his charming screen persona and his casting would have breathed badly needed life into the movie.<br /><br />“Dance, Girl, Dance” attempts to be many things — a show biz tale, a glimpse into the world of professional ballet, the competition between a reserved artist and a flashy, sexy showgirl, and a romantic comedy. It’s unlikely that Judy and Bubbles would ever cross paths professionally, but the script’s conceit is that they are under the wing of Madame Basilova, who tries to get them any kind of work in tough times. In Madame’s words, “You don’t learn oomph. You’re born with it.”<br /><br />Director Arzner tries to show Judy’s passion for ballet, yet we never see her in extended dance numbers. When she does dance, the camera tends to film her from the waist up or in close-up. An obvious dance stand-in (we see her from the back) appears early in the movie performing some difficult moves en pointe. If it weren’t for Lucille Ball, there wouldn’t be much to recommend “Dance, Girl, Dance.” The film is worth a look just to enjoy her free-spirited, uninhibited performance.<br /><br />Bonus materials on the newly restored 4K digital transfer release include a critical introduction, interview with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, and a booklet containing a critical essay.
The movie title "Dance, Girl, Dance (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]," available on Movies & TV, has received an average rating of 4.8 from 81 reviewers. 
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This title falls under the categories of Movies & TV, Featured Categories, Blu-ray and Comedy. 
The additional details include the following in key-value format :
 {"Genre": "Comedy", "Format": "Blu-ray, Subtitled", "Contributor": "Chester Clute, Maria Ouspenskaya, Louis Hayward, Harold Huber, Dorothy Arzner, Mary Carlisle, Ludwig Stossel, Edward Brophy, Ralph Bellamy, Lola Jensen, Sidney Blackmer, Emma Dunn, Katharine Alexander, Walter Abel, Virginia Field, Ernest Truex, Maureen O'Hara, Lucille BallChester Clute, Maria Ouspenskaya, Louis Hayward, Harold Huber, Dorothy Arzner, Mary Carlisle, Ludwig Stossel, Edward Brophy, Ralph Bellamy, Lola Jensen, Sidney Blackmer, Emma Dunn, Katharine Alexander, Walter Abel, Virginia Field, Ernest Truex, Maureen O'Hara, Lucill\u2026   See more", "Language": "English", "Studio": "The Criterion Collection", "MPAA rating": "NR (Not Rated)", "Product Dimensions": "0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 3.21 Ounces", "Director": "Dorothy Arzner", "Media Format": "Blu-ray, Subtitled", "Release date": "May 19, 2020", "Actors": "Maureen O'Hara, Lucille Ball, Louis Hayward, Virginia Field, Ralph Bellamy", "Country of Origin": "USA", "Number of discs": "1"}

Here is a brief synopsis of the title : Dorothy Arzner, the sole woman to work as a director in the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and early ’40s, brings a subversive feminist sensibility to this juicily entertaining backstage melodrama. A behind-the-footlights look at friendship, jealousy, and ambition in the ruthless world of show business, Dance, Girl, Dance follows the intertwining fates of two chorus girls: a starry-eyed dancer (Maureen O’Hara) who dreams of making it as a ballerina and the brassy gold digger (a scene-stealing Lucille Ball) who becomes her rival both on the stage and in love. The rare Hollywood film of the era to deal seriously with issues of female artistic struggle and self-actualization, Arzner’s film is a rich, fascinating statement from an auteur decades ahead of her time. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • New introduction by critic B. Ruby Rich • New selected-scene commentary featuring film historian Cari Beauchamp • PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley.