Swing Shift Maisie (1943)

• Director
  • Norman Z. McLeod
• Writers
  • Mary C. McCall Jr.(original screenplay)
  • Robert Halff(original screenplay)
  • Wilson Collison(based on character created by)
• Stars
  • Ann Sothern
  • James Craig
  • Jean Rogers

  In her seventh outing as irrepressible vaudeville entertainer Maisie Revere, Ann Sothern aided the war effort by working the swing shift in an airplane factory. Taking in a seemingly suicidal co-worker, Iris (Jean Rogers), Maisie can only watch as the girl steals her beau, handsome pilot James McLaughlin (James Craig). Promising to be faithful to James, who is going away on a training course, Iris promptly flirts with everyone in pants, much to chaperone Maisie's chagrin. When Maisie catches the selfish Iris in the middle of staging yet another "suicide," the vaudeville trouper turned everyone's favorite riveter threatens to spill the beans to Lieutenant James. In retaliation, Iris accuses Maisie of spying for the Nazis but everything is cleared up before the fadeout. MGM had at first assigned the male lead to newcomer Jim Davis, but he proved too inexperienced and the role eventually went to Craig, the studio's all-purpose Clark Gable lookalike. (As a consolation, Davis played a G.I. instead.) Starlet Jean Rogers, formerly Dale Arden in Flash Gordon (1936), does surprisingly well in her unsympathetic part and, doubled only partially by Jacqueline Wiere, performs a funny acrobatic number with the Wiere Brothers. Sothern leads a rousing chorus of the morale-boosting "There's a Girl Behind the Boy Behind the Gun" and remains her usual delightful self throughout what is one of MGM's better wartime potboilers.