Dream Girl

By Frank Rich

Verna: U.S.O. Girl

Verna: U.S.O. Girl, a 90-minute film on PBS's Great Performances (Wednesday, Jan. 25) series, happily ignores all the rules that plague made-for-TV movies. It is not an uplifting message drama about a trendy social or political issue. It is not a vehicle for TV stars seeking to plug an upcoming series or special. It is not a violent action spree or a self-congratulatory exercise in middlebrow culture. Verna: U.S.O. Girl is just a small story--too small for a theatrical film but perfect for the tube--engagingly told by talented people. It can stand as a model of what made-for-TV movies could and should be.

The film is an adaptation of a Paul Gallico story about a fledgling song-and-dance woman (Sissy Spacek) who enlists in a second-rate U.S.O. troupe during World War II. A shy orphan with a sweet smile and no discernible talent, Verna fervently believes that a U.S.O. tour overseas will speed her way to superstardom. She even imagines that Rodgers and Hammerstein will write her a musical after the war and promises her fellow troupers supporting roles. Though her pulpy fantasies of fame and fortune are ludicrously out of reach, her brave self-confidence wins over her battered G.I. audiences. The soldiers feel a kinship with the dauntless Verna because she, like them, is risking her life for the sake of an innocent American dream.

Written for the screen by Albert Innaurato (Gemini), one of the most gifted young U.S. playwrights, Verna is both a comic and a sorrowful account of a girl's peculiar heroism. The humor can be found in Innaurato's sassy dialogue, which gives new resonance to the lingo of '40s movies, and in the many vintage U.S.O. routines that dot the film's narrative. Underneath the surface wit is Innaurato's portrait of Verna's aching loneliness and cultural malaise. When Verna, for the sake of her nonexistent career, jilts an Army captain whom she loves, she ceases to be a colorful eccentric and becomes a tragic victim of her bankrupt, fan-magazine values. By the time the film reaches its ironic denouement, Innaurato's nostalgic affection for Verna's old-fashioned innocence has turned into pity.

The high quality of the script is matched by every aspect of the production. Despite his limited budget, Director Ronald F. Maxwell has not stinted on important details: he shot the war scenes on location in Europe and enlisted Broadway Choreographer Donald Saddler and Burlesque Comic Joey Faye to help create the vaudeville numbers. Maxwell's casting is precise. Spacek, playing a spiritual sister of the lost souls she acted in Badlands and 3 Women, is diaphanously vulnerable, but also makes a fine clown in her off-pitch songs. William Hurt, her awkward military suitor, is sensitive and attractive in the scenes where he tries to shield Verna from the horrors of battle. The other members of the U.S.O. show, a fraying torch singer and a has-been Catskills comic, are performed with oldtime show biz relish by Sally Kellerman and Howard da Silva. Verna's troupe is the kind of company that gives the small screen the illusion of depth.

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