Meet the People

Meet the People was a 1944 MGM patriotic film made during World War II with Lucille Ball and Dick Powell that took its title from a successful Los Angeles stage revue. The film stars Lucille Ball as Julie Hampton, a stage actress who goes to work in a shipyard after the play in which she was planning to star is aborted by the shipyard worker who wrote it, having disliked the Broadway glitz preferred by the play's director. Reporting for work the first day, actress Hampton discovers that the shipyard workers themselves are fully capable of performing in their own production. Yet in spite of a... budding love interest between them, Swanson and Hampton clash over the simple authenticity of worker performers vs. the necessary essentials of a "professional" production. Meet the People features Vaughn Monroe and his orchestra, as well as Spike Jones and his City Slickers, as well as Virginia O'Brien from the original stage cast, who sings the hit song Say We're Sweethearts Again. The phrase "Heavens to Murgatroyd!" later popularized by cartoon character Snagglepuss was originally uttered by Bert Lahr in the movie.
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