Dancing Co-Ed

Her hair isn't yet platinum and her makeup is still more girlish than glamorous, but Lana Turner is nonetheless "a walking acetylene torch" in her first top billing, playing a dancer planted in a big Midwest college to win a rigged Hollywood contest. The prize: the starring role in a big movie musical. The complications: plenty, especially when the co-ed falls for a crusading college newshound (Richard Carlson) who suspects the contest is as phony as a press agent's smile. But the real romance happened the next year when Dancing Co-Ed co-star Artie Shaw - whose swing music is as white-hot as the leading lady's starpower - took Turner out on their first date. They came back the next day from Las Vegas-married.

Lana Turner stars in this lighthearted musical comedy as Patty Marlow, a dancer fighting her way up the show business ladder. Famous hoofer Freddie Tobin (Lee Bowman) is about to start work on a new movie when his dance partner becomes pregnant and drops out of the project. Press agent Joe Drews (Roscoe Karns) dreams up a publicity stunt to find Freddie's new co-star: he'll stage a contest on college campuses to find a dancer among the student body. However, the contest is merely a ruse, and, when Joe and his cronies spot Patty, they realize she is the perfect girl for the job. Now, they have to pass Patty off as a studious co-ed for the sake of the "contest," which has begun to attract the suspicious attention of student journalist Pug Braddock (Richard Carlson). Artie Shaw and his band perform several numbers (Shaw and Turner would marry two years later), and keep an eye peeled for Veronica Lake in a bit part (she was still known as Constance Keane at the time).