'FOUR GIRLS IN TOWN'.......STARLET WARS - THE EMPIRE WANTS BABES

Four Girls In Town (1957)    It's a wonder you didn't hear our teeth gnashing at the thought of all the missed opportunities presented by this movie.......an obscure little B picture that rolled out of the Universal Studios assembly line like pre-packaged sausage......

                 But what an awesome premise for such a modest little nothing of a film.......big movie studio, planning a biblical epic about Esther, won't  give in to the outrageous demands of its female superstar...(60% of the profits, plus she owns the negative after 6 years!)

                 The fictitious studio honchos won't stand for it.....(even though 7 years earlier, the real Universal cut an unprecedented profit-participation deal with James Stewart for 'Winchester '73')

                 Hence.......a worldwide talent search! That's the ticket.......let's hunt down some international hotties, pick one and make a star out of her!

                  And here they come from around the world and New York City........the French girl (Gia Scala) hopes to restart her career, even if she's forced to leave behind her hubby and little boy. The Italian girl (Elsa Martinelli) hopes to latch on to a sugar-daddy. The German girl (Marianne Cook), just before  heading to Hollywood,survives a car crash that kills her fiance. And the American girl (Julie Adams) a stage actress, suffers from an overbearing, meddling mother.........

                  Off they go to potential fame 'n fortune.........and various romantic entanglements with a screen-test director (George Nader), a depressed film composer (Sydney Chaplin) and a playboy hotel-heir (Grant Williams)........(also randomly wandering around, a fledgling young studio contract player (John Gavin, more or less playing himself....)

                  The set-up here is loaded with untapped potential......this could have ended up as a brutal take-down of Hollywood as a promoter of phony dreams and flesh-peddler of young women......or on the flip side, it had all the makings of a racy, riotous romantic comedy, joyfully satirizing Hollywood while still celebrating it.......

                     Sorry. It's none of those things.

                    The film's too rooted in what it is.........low-grade, paint-by-numbers, machine-tooled mediocrity........peppered with dreary, unexceptional acting from a Junior Varsity cast......most of whom went on to much bigger and better things.

                     The only hint of what this movie could have been.......its one visual joke of seeing that preening,strutting studio diva only from behind......and always accompanied by a blue-sy noirish theme written especially for the character by Alex North..

                      On the plus side, it's a treat to see all these actors in their young prime.......Julie Adams, the Creature From The Black Lagoon's unrequited love.......the doomed-to-overdose-death Gia Scala, who went on to play a pivotal role in "The Guns Of Navarone"..... the impossibly adorable Elsa Martinelli, who so flustered John Wayne in "Hatari!", the 'Incredible Shrinking Man' himself, Grant Williams......the 'Psycho' stud and later Ambassador to Mexico John Gavin......and yes, that Marianne Cook is none other than Marianne Koch, whom Clint Eastwood rescued from sleazy bandidos in "A Fistful Of Dollars"........

                       (And fans of truly strange, off-the-beaten-track cinema would know George Nader from his role as FBI Agent Jerry Cotton in a series of bizarre  West German crime thrillers)

                       So we're not complaining about killing time watching "Four Girls In Town"s eclectic collection of cuties and the boys who woo 'em..........even as we were imaging a far, far cooler movie from this material...... something along the lines of either "The Bad And The Beautiful".....or maybe "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"

                      For the movie as it exists, 2 stars (**)    (And by the way, eventually Hollywood did make an Esther Bible epic. 3 years later in 1960.....'Esther And The King'........sorry Gia, Elsa , Julie and Marianne......you lost the role to.......Joan Collins.. That's showbiz, kids......)