The Petty Girl
| The Petty Girl | |
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| Directed by | Henry Levin |
| Produced by | Nat Perrin |
| Written by | Mary McCarthy |
| Based on | Unpublished story by Mary McCarthy |
| Starring |
Robert Cummings Joan Caulfield Elsa Lanchester |
| Music by |
George Duning Werner R. Heymann |
| Cinematography | William E. Snyder |
| Edited by | Al Clark |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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86–88 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Petty Girl (1950), also known as Girl of the Year, is a musical romantic comedy Technicolor film starring Robert Cummings and Joan Caulfield. Cummings portrays painter George Petty who falls for Victoria Braymore (Caulfield), the youngest professor at Braymore College who eventually becomes "The Petty Girl".
In New York City, George Petty (Robert Cummings) tries to convince car manufacturer B. J. Manton to use pretty women to help advertise his dreary new car model. He is not succeeding when Manton's daughter, the often-married Mrs. Connie Manton Dezlow (Audrey Long), interrupts the business meeting, takes a liking to the handsome young artist, and makes herself his patron. Soon, she has furnished him with a lavish apartment, complete with a butler named Beardsley (Melville Cooper). She also talks him into abandoning his cheesecake paintings in favor of more respectable portraits.
Meanwhile, Victoria Braymore (Joan Caulfield), the youngest professor at Braymore College, attends a conference in New York to defend the school against charges that it is outdated and old-fashioned. She has led a sheltered life, raised by the older professors after the death of her parents (the founders of the college), and is only allowed to go with a chaperone, her friend Dr. Crutcher (Elsa Lanchester).
George meets Victoria in an art museum. She resists his attempts to become better acquainted, but finally agrees to dinner, provided he finds a date for Dr. Crutcher. Desperate, he gets Beardsley to pretend to be his uncle Ben. The dinner is a disaster; Beardsley gets drunk, Dr. Crutcher thinks she is George's date, and Victoria is distant. Finally, George decides to leave, when Victoria surprises him by accompanying him to a nightclub frequented by artists. When a drink is spilled on her dress, she goes to the powder room, where the attendant offers to iron it. However, the police raid the establishment; in the rush of escaping people, Victoria ends up getting arrested dressed only in her slip. Her picture is published on the front page of the newspaper. It should be noted that an almost identical scene occurred in the movie Together Again (1944).
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