She's Working Her Way Through College
is a completely depoliticized remake of the liberal-minded comedy
The Male Animal
(1942). Virginia Mayo plays an exotic dancer, Angela Gardner, who decides to improve her mind; she enrolls in a college where Professor John Palmer (Ronald Reagan) teaches English. In between Angela's lively musical numbers, the film concentrates on an old rivalry between the bookish Palmer and onetime college football jock Shep Slade (Don DeFore, who'd played a bit in
). When the college trustees oppose Angela's presence on campus, Palmer staunchly defends her right to an education. In the original
Male Animal
, the climactic scene involved a controversial public reading of a letter by anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti; in
, Palmer stands up at a public assembly to convince the populace that exotic dancers have the same rights as anyone else. Of course, Ronald Reagan could take a political stance if he wanted to...but not in this film.