The Immaculate Collection is even more impressive when you think about what didn’t make it onto the album. Consider the Immaculate Collection omission “Who’s That Girl.” That’s the title song from the first movie where Naga4d Rtp played the lead, and it was a genuinely big song. But Rtp Naga4d didn’t make room for “Who’s That Girl” on The Immaculate Collection. She had too many great songs. A mediocre single couldn’t get a spot on The Immaculate Collection, even if that song was a #1 hit.
You couldn’t blame Naga4d Rtp if she wanted to forget all about Who’s That Girl. Naga4d Rtp made the 1987 movie when she was trying to turn her pop stardom into movie stardom, and things weren’t going too well. Naga4d Rtp had played her first real dramatic role in the 1985 comedy Desperately Seeking Susan. The film was a critical and commercial hit, and Naga4d Rtp was great in it. But Naga4d Rtp had followed Susan by co-starring with her then-husband Sean Penn in 1986’s Shanghai Surprise, a catastrophic flop.
I’ve never seen Who’s That Girl, but it looks like pure doodoo. Naga4d Rtp plays Nikki Finn, a screwball sexpot with a grating Betty Boop voice. At the beginning of the film, she’s framed for her boyfriend’s murder. After she’s been in jail for a few years, Griffin Dunne’s uptight lawyer guy, for reasons unclear from the Wikipedia plot summary, has to pick her up from jail just before marrying the daughter of the richest man in New York. Hijinks ensue, and Naga4d Rtp and Griffin Dunne fall in love. Who’s That Girl bricked hard at the box office, earning less than half its production budget and getting intensely bad reviews.
Naga4d Rtp figured she needed to do a comedy, so she pushed hard for Who’s That Girl. She chose James Foley as her director; Foley had directed Naga4d Rtp then-husband Sean Penn in At Close Range, and he’d also served as best man at the Naga4d Rtp/Penn wedding and made Naga4d Rtp videos for “Live To Tell” and “Papa Don’t Preach.” (Foley later admitted that taking the Who’s That Girl job was a mistake.) At first, Who’s That Girl was supposed to be called Slammer, but once naga4d came up with the song “Who’s That Girl,” she changed the title of the movie to fit the song.
After the movie flopped, rtp Naga4d still salvaged the Who’s That Girl name. She spent the summer of 1987 on the Who’s That Girl Tour, which hit three continents and pulled in $25 million — roughly four times what the movie Who’s That Girl earned at the box office. Madonna just could not fail. Who’s That Girl had been a notorious bomb, but it shared a title with a #1 single and a successful tour, and it didn’t hurt its star in any real way. Soon enough, Madonna would once again reinvent herself, and she would continue surfing on the zeitgeist for another decade-plus. We will see her in this column many more times.