The Shocking Miss Pilgrim was born when Ira Gershwin might have been doing some spring cleaning and came on some old unpublished music of his late brother George. From that both a score came and a movie for that score, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim who shocked Boston by becoming a professional woman, a Type Writer.Betty Grable is in the title role and she's graduated from a secretarial school in New York and she gets assigned to Boston to a shipping firm headed by Dick Haymes. Haymes is a proper Bostonian of the time and believes the woman's place is in the home. Eventually he'd like to see Grable in his home, but not in the office. When he tries to reject her, his sister suffragette Anne Revere interferes and Betty starts a career there on this newfangled machine called a typewriter.As the first one in Boston, a city loath to break any traditions she's a hero to the women's suffrage movement, not something Dick is ready to deal with. Of course it all works out in the end and in a most peculiar manner too.Of these trunk songs that Ira Gershwin developed for the film, For You For Me Forevermore and Aren't You Kind Of Glad We Did became posthumous hits for brother George. Both are duets in the film sung by Grable and Haymes. Dick recorded them for Decca with his usual singing partner Helen Forrest, but Betty as per Darryl Zanuck's ban on his stars recording never put these down on wax. A pity too, they're both presented quite nicely.The Shocking Miss Pilgrim got very good reviews but did not do well at the box office. Grable's fortune was her legs and we got barely a glimpse of them in this film.Fortunately we can still enjoy a musical literally born in a trunk.

Long before they were referred to as "secretaries", "girl Friday's", "administrative assistants" or even "typists", those who worked on those new fangled writing machines were simply called "typewriters". Graduating from a New York typewriters school, valedictorian Betty Grable is sent to Boston where she is informed by her new boss that he (Dick Haymes) expected a man. Fortunately, he has a suffragette aunt (Anne Revere) who has controlling interest in the firm, and that gets Grable the job. Now if she can just get her boss's respect, prevent office manager Gene Reynolds from sneering at her, and find a suitable place to live where a "typewriter" who happens to be a woman isn't confused for being a Jezebel, she'll make it just fine.And fine she does make it. She moves in to the boarding house of a bunch of self-acknowledged outcasts, run by rebellious Boston socialite Elizabeth Patterson who was ostracized for her unconventional ways. When Haymes attends a suffragette meeting with her, the stage is set for a romance between the two, even though that is against "rule #6". Grable expects his socialite mother (Elisabeth Risdon) to be a judgmental snob and prepares a series of society aimed insults for her with amusing results. Miss Pilgrim is an instant Boston celebrity, loathed by some and loved by others, and when the line-up of suffragettes and their few male supporters are revealed, the visual result is hysterical, featuring a few whom in 1894 were obviously of the "love that not reveal its name" category. (Films after the production code came in rarely showed obviously gay or lesbian characters, and this is one of the few).I wish there was less of the romance (featuring some unknown George Gershwin music that his brother Ira wrote new lyrics for) and more of the office setting and suffragette plot. That is more interesting, although the "scissors"/"knives" reference is truly hysterical and gives the impression that even if these two do get together, there will be no "pants wearing" in this family: it will be a marriage of equality-or else!I felt sorry for Gene Reynolds here, typecast in his usual prickly fat man role of a chauvinist fool. But for Revere and Risdon, I really wanted to see more of them. As sisters-in-law in the film, they never even appear together, a loss for the script. Patterson and her band of delightful eccentrics add some needed comedy which includes a transaction between three of the tenants simply to feed their egos. A woman resident of Patterson's house who has been working on re-writing the dictionary wouldn't be out of place in this new rhetoric world where the English language has all but disappeared together.

This is a first class musical. Several of the songs have become standards and continue to turn up in Gershwin orchestral compilations and in the repertoires of top cabaret artists. Ira Gershwin's lyrics for this show were among his wittiest ever.Betty Grable and Dick Haymes are in great voice. separately and in duet.The scenes in the boarding house peopled by eccentrics were highly original and very funny.It is inconceivable that this film has not been released on VHS or DVD, and that there is no CD of the soundtrack.It is my hope that some connoisseur of show tunes in the music business, like Michael Feinstein, will press for its release in some form.

The highlight of this film is the undiscovered songs by George Gershwin, which brother Ira wrote new lyrics to and Kay Swift arranged to make a film score that is a delight. One genuine hit, "For You, For Me, For Evermore," plus a near-hit, "Aren't You Glad We Did," are supported by a host of other pleasing tunes, including the witty novelty, "But Not in Boston." Dick Haymes' rich baritone is another strong point in what is, from a storyline point of view, a rather silly film.