Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951)

Painting the Clouds with Sunshine was a remake of the 1929 musical Gold Diggers of Broadway, which no longer exists for comparison (though its first remake, Gold Diggers of 1933, has been safely preserved). Carol (Virginia Mayo), Abby (Lucille Norman) and June (Virginia Gibson) arrive in Las Vegas for the express purpose of landing millionaire husbands. Securing work as a singing trio, the girls do their best to cozy up to potential wealthy mates, but always seem to end up with the "wrong" kind of guy. Abby falls for impecunious gambler Vince Nichols (Dennis Morgan). The girls decide to use Vince's resources to save hotelier Felix Hoff (S.Z. Sakall) from bankruptcy. Enter Vince's tight-lipped Boston-banker cousin Bennington (Tom Conway), determined to rescue his relative from gold-diggers, and on and on the plot rolls, occasionally interrupted by splashy, Technicolorful musical numbers emphasizing the physical attributes of the three heroines. Like MGM's Singin' in the Rain, Painting the Clouds with Sunshine was designed primarily to showcase Warner Bros' backlog of songs from its early-talkie musicals. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi