"Dance, Girl, Dance" is one of Arzner's most celebrated films. Described by "Variety" as "an unlikely-female-buddy burlesque movie that conceals a withering attack on the male gaze under its showgirl wardrobe of sequins and feathers," the film starred Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara as the pair of showgirl best friends. "Dance, Girl, Dance" is yet another example of the ways in which Arzner subverted and complicated traditional depictions of women and female relationships. The film is Arzner's best-known and most-studied work and thematizes the issues of female performance, female relationships, and social mobility. Most notable though, is the film's interrogation of the male gaze. "Dance, Girl, Dance" "foregrounds dance as women's avenue to self-expression and economic independence." In a scene towards the latter half of the film, O'Hara's character Judy stops her stage performance to directly address the diegetic male audience. Judy confronts the men with a stirring admonishment of their objectification of women. In feminist film studies, this scene has been read as a "returning" of the male gaze and a larger address to the real life, not just diegetic, audience.