Twelve Days of Christmas: Day One

Although I'm not a huge fan of the film, White Christmas (1954) consistently comes up as one of those perennial Christmas favorites.  I don't think that I would have a such a problem with the film if it had a different name.  But, as it is, for a film with the word Christmas in the title, there's barely any scenes that involve Christmas.  Sure, in many of the musical numbers the performers are wearing red, and there's the requisite singing of White Christmas by Bing Crosby, but ultimately had the studio that produced White Christmas had not wanted to bank on the popularity of the song, the film could have easily been released as a regular old, let's put on a show, musical. 

The film revolves around a showbiz duo (Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) who team up with a sister act (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) to help save their former general's Vermont Inn.  Of course, romance blooms between the four leads, and by the end the inn is saved and the group puts on a magnificent show.

If you're looking for an old fashioned Christmas extravaganza, you're bound to be disappointed by the five to ten minutes of the run time that is actually devoted to yuletide revelry.  If you're looking for a delightful technicolor musical, you could do worse.  To save you from watching the entire film and being disappointed by the lack of Christmas, here's one of the two Christmas scenes... enjoy!

Musical Madness: Show Boat

There are two types of Hollywood musicals.  There are those that take a number of songs from a composer's catalogue and cobble a film around them, or there are those based on an original stage musical.  Today's selection is in the later group.  Show Boat (1951) is based on the 1927 Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's musical of the same name and was previously adapted for the screen in 1936.  As a result much of the sensibilities that are on display in this version are very much influenced by it's previous existence on the stage.

Directed by George Sidney, the main story in Show Boat is that of 18 year old Magnolia Hawks (Kathryn Grayson), the daughter of Cotton Blossom (the name of the titular show boat) captain Andy Hawks (Joe E. Brown) and her marriage to gambler and milquetoast river scoundrel Gaylord (yup) Ravenal (played by 50s musical mainstay and Dallas alumn Howard Keel). The trajectory of this storyline is typical: they meet, fall in love, her parents don't approve, they run off together and get married, he abandons her, and eventually they are reunited. It's probably the most uninteresting part of the film. The film's other major plot thread concerns the character of Julie Laverne (Ava Gardner), the lead actress on the show boat who is hiding the fact that she is mulatto from everyone, but her white husband Steve (in the late nineteenth century it was illegal for African Americans to appear on stage and to be married to a white man). A jealous former suitor reveals Julie's secret and she and Steve are forced from the Showboat, eventually causing their marriage to break up and Julie to develop a serious drinking problem and fade into obscurity.

As far as film musicals go, Show Boat is not particularly great.  With the exception of the musical numbers sung by Julie (which I will get to in a moment) and William Warfield's show stopping rendition of Old Man River, the musical numbers fall incredibly short.  Because both Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson were both trained operatic singers their numbers are sung in this manner, which makes them somewhat inaccessible to modern audiences.  The songs they do sing are unmemorable and so little to sell the core storyline.  There are also a couple of number performed by the Cotton Blossom's hoofer duo, played by Marge and Gower Champion.  But while charming do little for the film other than extend its run time.

At this point you are probably wondering why I am bothering to talk about this film?  While I think this is  one of the weakest film musicals I will talk about in this series, I think some of the backstage machinations illustrate the politics of the studio era.  For the part of Julie, MGM considered Judy Garland (who was on contract to another studio), Dinah Shore (not famous enough), and most interestingly Lena Horne. Lena Horne was especially interested in playing Julie, and actively campaigned for the part.  As the only African-American actress of the candidates and a famed vocalist, she would have been the ideal choice.  However, because it was against the production codes of the ages to show African Americans to be shown kissing or in romantic scenes with white actors, she was ruled out (much like Julie is cast off of the Cotton Blossom for her relationship with Steve).  In the end Ava Gardner was cast as Julie, who was on contract to MGM and was famous enough).

Just as Lena Horne was considered unsuitable for the role of Julie, Ava Gardner also experienced her own issues with regards to her musical numbers.  While not a famed vocalist like Horne, Gardner was more than a respectable vocalist in her own right, and practiced extensively for the role.  Though she originally sang along to the vocal tracks she recorded for her sequences, it was decided in post-production that her voice did not fit the overall tone of the film and vocalist Annette Warren's renditions of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and Bill were added to the final film.  The likely reason is to match the Julie vocals to the operatic singing style of Keel and Grayson.  Unfortunate, seeing as in the play Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man is described as a 'coloured' song and as such should be performed more like a bluesy torch song.  Situations like this were very typical in Hollywood musicals, with many of the major actors and actresses of the day being dubbed by professional vocalists.  If you do a search on YouTube you can find a number of these musical sequences with the actress' original vocals re-dubbed onto the film sequences.  Ava Gardner's lost Show Boat sequences just happen to be my favourite of this phenomena.

So, without further adieu,  you can compare the original film version of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man to the Ava Gardner version and see what you think.

Annette Warren:

Ava Gardner:

I'm Officially Excited About The Artist!

How cool is the trailer for Michel Hazanavicius' film The Artist?  Not only does it look to classic cinema for it's art direction.  It follows suit with it's sound design, mimicking pre-talkie soundtrack (it's silent!).  The film has been receiving rave reviews at all the film festivals that it has been presented at (it won a best actor award for lead actor Jean Dujardin at Cannes).  The unfortunate thing is that because it's considered to be a bit of an "arty" film, there won't be a set nationwide release and those interested will have to wait for their local art house cinemas to get a print.  Here's the trailer.  Try to see how many classic cinema references it makes.

Musical Madness: On the Town

Moving further into the musical abyss, I find myself five years later than my first entry into this series.  While there were many musicals made in-between Meet Me in St. Louis and today's feature, On the Town, many are difficult to find on DVD, Blue Ray, or by other conventional means, the ones that are don't really do it for me.  On the bright side, On the Town happens to ranks as one of my all time favourite movie musicals.  Co-directed by Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly and with a cast featuring Kelly and Frank Sinatra, On the Town (1949) represents the Technicolor musical at its most fun.

On the Town revolves around three sailors, Gabey, Chip, and Ozzie (Kelly, Sinatra, and Jules Munshin respectively), who are on 24 hour shore leave in New York City.  It's their first time in the Big Apple and they want to pack in all the sites and dames that they can, and as you would expect misadventures abound.  The main plot thread that extends throughout the picture is Kelly's pursuit of Miss. Turnstiles, aka. Ivy Smith (played by Vera Ellen), the New York Subway's flavour of the month pin-up.  As the sailors search the city for Miss Turnstiles, each picks up a lady friend to aid in their quest.  First, female cabby Brunhilde (the incredibly underrated comedian Betty Garrett) takes a shine to Chip and decided to give them access to her cab.  Then while searching the Museum of Natural History they happen upon anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller) who declares Ozzie to be a perfect specimen of prehistoric man;  unfortunately a lively song and dance number brings down an entire dinosaur skeleton, and puts the heat on our growing group.  They decide to split up with the two newly formed couples taking off with each other and Gabey left to search on his own.  Of course, he just happens to meet up with Ivy again and after melting her seemingly haughty veneer gets her to meet up with he and the group for a night on the town.  The rest of the film is devoted to their night on the town and the continued hijinks of the three sailors and their gals as they try to do it all and avoid the cops. 

On the Town is one of the more successful musicals in the fact that it does not sacrifice story for the musical numbers (a crime that many other musicals of the era are guilty of).  While the story is pretty light and fluffy, it is always enjoyable and the enthusiasm of the performers shine through and infect the viewer with joy.  The film never takes itself too seriously.  I also can't think of a bad musical number in the whole film.  The introductory number New York, New York might be one of the most fun musical numbers put on film (the song is also an incredible earworm) and the film's centrepiece On the Town is similarly enjoyable with the six main player singing and dancing their hearts out.

Where the film falters (only slightly!) is the five minute A Day in New York ballet number where Gene Kelly, Vera Ellen and four other dancers representing the other character in the group pantomime the exact story we've just seen (the group on their night on the town).  It's a bit redundant, but of the extended dance sequences in Kelly's movies (there is usually one per picture in the films where he has some creative control) it is probably the shortest and least jarring.  It's also the least visually interesting.  I'll get into Gene Kelly's obsessive devotion to the art of dance and the demands that he made of the actresses appearing opposite his in future musical madness articles (there are more interesting tales to be told with regards to other films).  Of these films this one suffers the least under these creative demands.

On the Town is a wonderful film that doesn't demand much of the viewer.  It is light and airy and presents the talents involved at their best.  Noteable also is that this the first Hollywood musical to film on location.  Just to infect you with a little bit of the fun, and show off some of those great on location shots, here's the great New York, New York opening...

Musical Madness: Meet Me in St. Louis

For some reason I've had the urge to re-examine some of my favourite Hollywood musicals of yesteryear.  I don't know if it's the summer, or that it seems like a lot of them have been turning up on TCM lately, but I just feel like doing a feature on them.  There are a lot of great musicals from the thirties, but for my money's worth nothing tops the Technicolour masterpieces came out during the forties and fifties.  This era of movie musicals was helmed by some of the greatest singers and dancers of all time, and not co-incidentally most will come up in more than one film.  But, enough about the genre, let's start a look at our first feature... which as the title espouses is Vincente Minnelli's charming musical on family life in turn of the century St. Louis, Meet Me In St. Louis (1944). 

Meet Me in St. Louis is most famous for the song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which the incomparable Judy Garland sings towards the end of the film.  As a result it is often unjustly labelled as a Christmas film (much like It's a Wonderful Life), even though only a quarter of the film takes place during the Christmas season.  It could just as easily be labelled a Halloween film or a summer film, or even a turn of the century party film by that assumption.  In truth, the film tells the story of a year in the life of the Smith family as St. Louis gears up for the 1904 World Fair.  We see them first in summer, then in fall (Halloween to be exact), in winter (Christmas), and then in Spring when the fair finally begins. It stars Judy Garland as second born daughter Esther Smith who is trying to win the affections of John Truett (Tom Drake), the cute boy next door.  Older sister Rose ( Lucille Bremer ) is trying to get her long distance beau Warren to propose to her.  Only son Lon (Henry H. Daniels Jr.) is longs to be with Rose's rival .  Second youngest sister Agnes (Joan Carroll) is the picture of a know-it-all kid.  Youngest sister Tootie (Margaret O'Brian in a particularly irritating performance) obsesses about death.  Crotchety father Alonzo (Leon Ames) is trying to get ahead at the office.  Equally crotchety housekeeper Katie (Marjorie Main) is constantly antagonizing Alonzo. Mother Anna (Mary Astor) tries to appease her cranky husband and keep the peace.  Kind-hearted Grandfather (Harry Davenport) is always there with wise words for all. 

Instead of a grand sweeping story involving all the characters we are entertained with several vignettes which show each character's arch throughout.  Towards the end a plot twist arises that involves the entire family, and indeed it is the only real crisis of the film.  But, being a Hollywood musical it is resolved and all is happy again by the end.  As I have previously mentioned both Christmas and Halloween are highlighted in the film.  What a treat it is to get a picture of what those holidays were like back in the "good old days"  when people danced the reel at Christmas balls and Halloween was more about tricks than treats.  Despite the charm and the wholesome family values espoused in this film it has it's eyebrow raising moments.  The most shocking of which being the Halloween sequence, which starts out cute enough but by the end it is revealed that the two youngest Smith girls have committed a serious crime,  which probably resulted in several people getting injured and serious property damage.  What do you think the punishment is?  No ice cream with their cake and Esther scolding them! Whatever happened to the strap?  Or, forcing kids to spend a day in prison?  Esther doesn't even do it because of the people they probably hurt or the thousands of dollars of property damage.  It's because Tootie accused John Truett of trying to kill her.

Like most musical the story is secondary to the musical numbers, and there are definitely some memorable ones in this one.  Other than have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas the standouts in this film with have to be the Trolley Song, Skip-to-my Lou, and Under the Bamboo Tree (probably the only time Margaret O'Brian is partially tolerable on screen).  It also has its share of schmaltzy numbers that kind of throw the momentum off track a bit (there's at least one in the majority of the films I'm about to talk about).  In the case of Meet Me In St. Louis the two offenders are The Boy Next Door (too syrupy for my tastes) and You and I (a duet between Ames and Astor which brings the film's momentum to a screeching halt). 

Please don't let a couple of lacklustre songs and an annoying child star keep you from watching this film.  Even though the quaint wholesome quality of the era portrayed here can be off putting to someone used to modern films, it is well worth the time and effort.  Judy Garland gives one of her greatest performances and is a joy to watch during the musical sequences, and the charms of the film shine through.  I haven't even started on the magnificent Victorian art design, especially the Smith home which is a character in itself.  If you have't seen this film, do yourself a favour and watch it.  It's a family friendly starting point for classic musicals.

Here's a sample of the Trolley Song...

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a Pretty Awesome Film!

With the recent death of Jane Russell, I decided to revisit her best film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and was struck by the charm of this screwball comedy/musical.  Not that I have ever had any ill-will towards the film, but I forgot how genuinely entertaining it is, and what a great portrayal of female camaraderie it demonstrates.

Directed by Howard Hawkes and released in 1953, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes stars Russell and Marilyn Monroe as Dorothy Shaw and Lorelei Lee, two showgirls who are best friends with very different preferences in men.  Lorelei (Monroe) plays her typical ditzy blonde who is obsessed with millionaires and diamonds, while Russell's Dorothy despises men with money and is basically out to find a guy who can show her a good time.  Lorelei has captured the heart of a nerdy millionaire whose father disapproves of their union, and is going abroad to France to elope with her intended; Dorothy tags along to play chaperon and have a good time with the men's Olympic team who are travelling on the same ocean liner.

Their trip hits a snag when Lorelei's fiance's father hires a private eye to get some dirt on the blonde man-trap.  While trying to get to Lorelei he starts romancing Dorothy, and soon he and Dorothy fall of each other.  Meanwhile, Lorelei discovers that diamond mine owner Sir Frances "Piggy" Beekman (played by the always wonderful Charles Coburn) is on the ocean liner and starts plotting to seduce the old man into giving her his wife's diamond tiara.  The private dick gets the dirt on Lorelei and the girls have to hatch a plot to get it back from him.  Several misadventures and misunderstandings follow before the girls get their men and the happy ending they desire.

As mentioned before, the film really is all about the relationship between these two women and the way they constantly put their heads on the line for each other in difficult times.  The chemistry between Russell and Monroe is undeniable and the film is at its best when the two are playing off each other.  Other than Piggy, the male characters are pretty unremarkable and serve more as plot devices to explain the hijinks these girls get into.

As with the plot of the film, the musical numbers that work best are also the ones where both Monroe and Russell are together.  To most people who are familiar with the film, the number that immediately comes to mind is Monroe's often imitated, indelible  Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend.   Russell does a similar number with the Olympic team dancing along in flesh coloured shorts when she performs Ain't There Anyone Here For Love, and both numbers are great but together the ladies bring down the house.  Unlike many other musicals every song works in the film and pretty much every number is memorable.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ranks pretty high on my list of favourite movie musicals.  It's light, doesn't take itself too seriously, and is a lot of fun to watch.  I really recommend that people who have never seen it take a look.  Here's a sample of the Russell/Monroe magic.