“I’m strictly an enlisted man’s girl.” – Betty Grable
A teenage Grable on the set of Whoopee (1930).
“Betty Grable is getting 14,400 fan letters a month, and the number is spurting up by the day. Of this 91 percent is from servicemen….Betty Grable is fast becoming known around Hollywood as the Pin Up Girl – the star with the most pictures pinned up in barracks.” – Dee Lawrence’s article, “Movieland’s Pin-Up Queens,” May 24, 1942.
“I would have married George a week after I met him.I was so deeply in love with him. But when you wait two-and-a-half years, there doesn’t seem a future in a romance with a married man.” — Betty Grable
Source: Louella Parsons (1943)
Photo: 1942
“I’m not an actress, and I don’t want those roles in which I have long speeches, full of meaning. I’m the kind of a performer who wants a few lines that are cues to go into a song or a dance.” –Betty Grable
Source: Sidney Skolsky (1943)
Photo: 1943
The Grable gun (as I like to call it). Here’s the story: a WWII GI had taken a Polish-made “VIS-35 Radom Semi-Automatic Pistol, #M6678, 9mm, 4-5/8” barrel.”
He then stripped the blue finish away, fitted a cut-out of Grable, and covered it with aircraft Plexiglas. His creating a “sweetheart grip” out of scrap Plexiglass was not an entirely uncommon practice among servicemen at that time.
“Look, I’ve had it. I’ve had the gravy for a good number of years, and I’ve enjoyed it. Now let the younger kids work their heads off. Not me. I’ve got other things in life to be interested in.” — Betty Grable
Source: Bob Thomas (1954)
Photo: 1954
