US (1942): Musical/Dance
104 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Music sustains old-hat plot of vaudeville couple determined to play Palace, circa WWI. Kelly's film debut enhanced by he and Garland singing title tune, "When You Wore a Tulip," etc.
Pauline Kael Review
Fresh from his Broadway success in Pal Joey, Gene Kelly made his movie début here as a good-bad guy, playing opposite Judy Garland. They are a vaudeville team who are just getting their big break when Kelly is inducted (the period is the First World War); he deliberately injures his hand so he won't have to fight and—the movie having been made during the Second World War—he must then reform and become a gallant hero. The story is naïvely patriotic and sentimental, but Kelly is amazingly fresh; his grin could melt stone, and he and Garland are a magical pair (especially when they're singing "The bells are ringing for me and my gal"). The songs include "Ballin' the Jack," "Smiles," and "After You've Gone," and there are some nifty comedy routines featuring Kelly and Ben Blue. Produced by Arthur Freed and directed by Busby Berkeley; with George Murphy, Horace McNally (later Stephen), Richard Quine, Keenan Wynn, and Marta Eggerth. The writers were Fred Finklehoffe, Sid Silvers, Richard Sherman, and Howard Emmett Rogers. MGM.
Academy Awards®
US (1943): War
90 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
High-grade propaganda of WWII POW camp with hero Aumont rousing defeated Kelly to battle; Whorf is dedicated doctor, Lorre a despicable Nazi, Cronyn a fickle informer.
US (1943): Musical/Dance/Comedy
101 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Nightclub worker Skelton pines for beautiful singing star Ball; when he swallows a Mickey Finn, he dreams he's Louis XVI, and has to contend with the prickly Madame DuBarry (Ball). Colorful nonsense, missing most of the songs from Cole Porter's Broadway score, though "Friendship" is used as the finale. Opens like a vaudeville show, with beautiful chorines and specialty acts, including young Mostel, and Dorsey's band—with Buddy Rich on drums—doing a sensational "Well, Git It." They turn up later in powdered wigs, as do the Pied Pipers, with Dick Haymes (in his film debut) and Jo Stafford. Lana Turner has a bit part.
US (1943): War
70 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
GI pilot Tone volunteers to take on a suicide mission. As he flies to his death, his buddies recall his troubled past (most notably his involvement with a Huey Long-like governor). Good cast uplifts so-so curio; it's intriguing to see Kelly in a supporting part, as a hothead. Watch for Peter Lawford at the opening.
US (1943): Musical/Dance
126 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Grayson lives with officer-father John Boles at army base, falls for hotheaded private Kelly and decides to prepare an all-star show for the soldiers. Dubious plot is an excuse for specialty acts by top MGM stars.
Pauline Kael Review
An army camp puts on a big show, culminating in "United Nations on the March"--a work by Shostakovich-star extravaganza, Lena Horne sings "Honeysuckle Rose," and Judy Garland tackles "The Joint Is Really Jumpin'," but nothing could save it. Maybe José Iturbi put the seal of doom on the venture when he sat down to play boogie-woogie; he hits the notes all right, but his boogie-woogie is (arguably) the most mechanical ever recorded. The dull, dull plot involves Mary Astor, John Boles, and Kathryn Grayson. With Mickey Rooney, June Allyson, Gloria De Haven, Ben Blue, Eleanor Powell, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, and many others, plus the bands of Kay Kyser, Benny Carter, and Bob Crosby. Written by Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins; produced by Joe Pasternak. George Sidney directed.
Academy Awards®
US (1944): Mystery
92 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Somerset Maugham novel reset in America. Crime story with Durbin gone wrong to help killer-hubby Kelly; songs include "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year."
Pauline Kael Review
The screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz, took Somerset Maugham's novel of the same name, changed the setting from France to New Orleans, and turned it into a vehicle for Deanna Durbin, who had outgrown her singing adolescent heyday. Though a bit chubby-cheeked (maturing child stars are rarely lucky in their bone structure), she's not too objectionable in the role of a young singer from Vermont who marries a no-good charmer (Gene Kelly), scion of an old Creole family. Just about everything is sodden and unconvincing, though. The husband murders a bookmaker, and the wife blames herself for not having been a stronger influence on him. The director, Robert Siodmak—so astute in many of his other films—seems stuck and has to take these sentiments unduly seriously. (This film was made in the days of the Code, and when the wife is forced to perform in a dive we have to accept her word that she is leading a degraded life, since what we see is peachy clean.) Durbin sings "Always" and "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year;" Kelly neither sings nor dances, and he hasn't much more luck with the weakling role than actors generally do. With Richard Whorf, Gladys George, Gale Sondergaard, and David Bruce. Universal.
Academy Awards®
US (1944): Musical/Dance/Comedy
107 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Incredibly clichéd plot is overcome by loveliness of Rita, fine Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin musical score (including "Long Ago and Far Away,") and especially Kelly's solo numbers. Silvers adds some laughs, but Eve Arden steals the film as Kruger's wisecracking assistant.
Pauline Kael Review
The wartime plot about hoofers and models is a shambles, and there's a prolonged flashback to the Gay Nineties that is almost ruinous, but this big, flashy, Technicolor musical has a lot to recommend it: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Phil Silvers, and songs by Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, including "Put Me to the Test," and the slurpy but affecting "Long Ago and Far Away." Kelly and Silvers are a livelier team than Kelly and Hayworth, though she does look sumptuous, and her big smile could be the emblem of the period. The cast includes Lee Bowman, Otto Kruger, Eve Arden, Edward Brophy, Jinx Falkenburg, and dozens of celebrated models. Charles Vidor directed; Virginia Van Upp wrote the script; Stanley Donen, Kelly, Seymour Felix, and Jack Cole staged the dances; Nan Wynn dubbed Hayworth's singing. Arthur Schwartz produced, for Columbia.
Academy Awards®
US (1945): Musical/Dance
140 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Popular '40s musical of sailors on leave doesn't hold up storywise, but musical numbers still good: Sinatra's "I Fall in Love Too Easily," Kelly's irresistible dance with Jerry the cartoon mouse.
Pauline Kael Review
This Gene Kelly-Frank Sinatra musical has an abundance of energy and spirit, and you may feel it could be wonderful if it weren't so stupidly wholesome, and if you could just do something about Kathryn Grayson and José Iturbi—like maybe turn Terry Southern loose on them. The sugary wholesomeness was the stock in trade of the producer, Joe Pasternak; characters in his movies always look scrubbed and sexless, and act embarrassingly young. Pasternak doesn't destroy Kelly's bounding vitality, however; this was the hit movie that made him a hugely popular star. He and Sinatra play sailors on shore leave in Hollywood who get involved with Grayson, a singer working as an extra and living with her chubby-faced angelic little nephew (Dean Stockwell). In the worst sequence, Sinatra sings Brahms' "Lullaby" to Stockwell. Kelly has three big dance numbers, including the famous Jerry the Mouse cartoon dance, and he and Sinatra perform together amiably. With Pamela Britton, Edgar Kennedy, Grady Sutton, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, and Sharon McManus—the little girl who dances with Kelly. George Sidney directed; Kelly choreographed, with Stanley Donen assisting. The songs are mostly by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. MGM.
Academy Awards®
US (1946): Musical/Dance
110 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Variable all-star film introduced by Powell as Ziegfeld in heaven. Highlights are Brice-Hume Cronyn sketch, Astaire-Kelly dance, Moore-Arnold comedy routine, Skelton's "Guzzler's Gin," Horne's solo, Garland's "The Interview." Various segments directed by George Sidney, Roy Del Ruth, Norman Taurog, Lemuel Ayers, Robert Lewis, Merril Pye. Filmed mostly in 1944.
Pauline Kael Review
Vincente Minnelli directs an extraordinary cast in this plotless, often tedious MGM musical revue. It features a peculiar Hollywood-40s style of decor (chorus boys with jewelled antler-shaped branches, chorus girls clad in vermillion, and so on). Some high spots: Fred Astaire dances "Limehouse Blues" in a set left over from THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY; he and Gene Kelly do a routine together ("The Babbitt and the Bromide," by George and Ira Gershwin); and Judy Garland appears at her most lighthearted in the dance-and-patter number--"A Great Lady Has an Interview." The other performers include Lena Horne, Fanny Brice, Victor Moore, Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Keenan Wynn, Jimmy Durante, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, James Melton, Hume Cronyn, Edward Arnold, and William Powell as Ziegfeld up in heaven dreaming this big bash. The fastidious are advised to head for the lobby while Kathryn Grayson sings "There's Beauty Everywhere" against magenta foam skies. Produced by Arthur Freed.
US (1948): Musical/Dance
102 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Judy thinks circus clown Kelly is really Caribbean pirate; lavish costuming, dancing and Cole Porter songs (including "Be a Clown") bolster stagy plot. Kelly's dances are exhilarating, as usual. Based on S.N. Behrman play.
Pauline Kael Review
Judy Garland is a 19th-century maiden on a Caribbean island, dreaming of a famous pirate, and Gene Kelly, bouncing with élan in the manner of Fairbanks, is a travelling actor who pretends to be that pirate. This Vincente Minnelli musical, based on an S.N. Behrman play that the Lunts performed, is flamboyant in an innocent and lively way. Though it doesn't quite work, and it's all a bit broad, it doesn't sour in the memory. The Nicholas Brothers join Garland and Kelly in the celebrated "Be a Clown" number. The score is by Cole Porter. With Walter Slezak, Reginald Owen, Gladys Cooper, and George Zucco. MGM.
Academy Awards®
US (1947): Comedy
103 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4
Kelly returns from WWII to get to know his war bride for the first time and clashes with her nouveau riche family. A notorious flop in its day, but not all that bad; Kelly does a couple of first-rate dance numbers.
US (1948): Comedy/Adventure
125 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Oddball, lavish production of Dumas tale with Kelly as D'Artagnan. Occasional bright moments, but continual change of tone, and Heflin's drowsy characterization as Athos, bog down the action. Lana makes a stunning Lady DeWinter.
Pauline Kael Review
In grinning, leaping homage to Douglas Fairbanks, Gene Kelly plunges his sword into dozens of extras, vaults onto more horses than there are in a rodeo, swings from assorted drapes and chandeliers, and hops about 17th-century rooftops. His D'Artagnan veers between romance and burlesque, but is always enjoyable. However, the lavish MGM production is a heavy, roughhousing mess. As Lady de Winter, Lana Turner sounds like a drive-in waitress exchanging quips with hot-rodders, and, as Richelieu, Vincent Price might be an especially crooked used-car dealer. (The studio didn't want to offend anyone, so this Richelieu doesn't wear clerical trappings, and is never addressed by his ecclesiastical title.) Angela Lansbury wears the crown of France as if she'd won it in a milking contest at a county fair, and, as Lady Constance, June Allyson looks like a little girl done up in Mama's clothes. Kelly's amorous grapplings don't seem as strenuous as they actually were: he threw Lana Turner on her bed so hard that she fell off it and broke her elbow. He should have thrown the director, George Sidney, and the costume designer, Walter Plunkett, who swaddled the performers. Among them are Van Heflin, Gig Young, Frank Morgan, Keenan Wynn, John Sutton, Ian Keith, Patricia Medina, Robert Coote, and Reginald Owen. Produced by Pandro S. Berman, from Robert Ardrey's script.
Academy Awards®
US (1948): Musical/Dance/Biography
119 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Sappy biography of songwriters Rodgers (Drake) and Hart (Rooney) is salvaged somewhat by their wonderful music, including Kelly's dance to "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue."
Pauline Kael Review
Double bio of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, with Tom Drake and Mickey Rooney insanely miscast in the roles. The story part is painfully embarrassing to watch, but some of the musical numbers are just fine. The huge cast includes Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Perry Como, Janet Leigh, Gower Champion, Gene Kelly (who choreographed the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" ballet that he dances with Vera-Ellen), and June Allyson, whose "Thou Swell" with the Blackburn Twins is a bright spot in her career. Also with Lena Horne singing "The Lady Is a Tramp," and Ann Sothern, Mel Tormé, Betty Garrett, Allyn Ann McLerie, and Marshall Thompson. Norman Taurog directed, from a script by Fred Finklehoffe, based on a story by Guy Bolton and Jean Holloway. Robert Alton and Kelly staged the dances. The roughly two dozen Rodgers and Hart songs include "Where or When," "There's a Small Hotel," and "This Can't Be Love." MGM.
US (1949): Sports/Musical/Dance
93 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Contrived but colorful turn-of-the-century musical, with Williams taking over Sinatra and Kelly's baseball team. "O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg" and Kelly's "The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day" are musical highlights.
Pauline Kael Review
This big MGM musical, set in the early part of the century, began with a not too inspired script idea from Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and after it went through a series of cast changes and then got assigned to Busby Berkeley to direct, it was a full-scale mess. Kelly and Frank Sinatra are vaudevillians who are also baseball players; Esther Williams, the manager of the baseball team, is in love with Kelly, but Sinatra is in love with her. And there are gangsters trying to get the boys to double-cross her and lose a game. This asinine story just about smothers the good-natured hoofing. Comden and Green and Roger Edens did the songs, but the musical numbers have that flag-waving Irish-American cheeriness which also blighted many Fox musicals made in the same period. With Betty Garrett and Jules Munshin, who work well with Kelly and Sinatra. They all got together—sans Esther Williams—the following year in ON THE TOWN. The finale here isn't by Berkeley; it was co-directed by Kelly and Donen, and served to persuade the studio to let them co-direct ON THE TOWN. Script by Harry Tugend and George Wells; with Edward Arnold and Tom Dugan.
US (1950): Crime
93 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Kelly avenges his father's murder by the Black Hand society in turn-of-the-century NYC. Atmospheric, well-made film with Kelly in a rare (and effective) dramatic performance.
US (1950): Musical/Dance
109 min, Color
I denna film slog Judy Garlands personliga problem allt mer igenom. Vid mängder av tillfällen satt de medverkande under inspelningen och väntade på att Judy skulle dyka upp. Inga hårda ord sas dock eftersom alla visste och förstod Judys problem. Gene har sagt till producenten Joe Pasternack: "Jag gör vad som helst för den här flickan, Joe. Om jag måste komma hit och sitta och vänte i ett år, så kommer jag att göra det för henne. Det är så jag känner för henne".
Garlands mest berömda nummer i filmen, "Get Happy", filmades flera veckor efter produktionen var avslutad. Då hade hon gått ner 7 kilo och kommit i bättre själslig form.
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Kelly's theater troupe takes over Judy's farm, she gets show biz bug. Thin plot, breezy Judy, frantic Silvers, chipper De Haven. Judy sings "Get Happy," Kelly dances on newspapers.
Pauline Kael Review
The emotional rapport of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly transforms the corny, simpleminded story material--a reworking of the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney pictures about adolescents staging a show in a barn. Though Garland is overweight and obviously uncomfortable in much of the picture, she and Kelly bring conviction to their love scenes and make them naïvely fresh. As a team, they balance each other's talents: she joins her odd and undervalued cakewalker's prance to his large-spirited hoofing, and he joins his odd, light, high voice to her sweet deep one. Their duet on "You Wonderful You" has a plaintive richness that stays with one. The most famous sequence is Garland's rakish "Get Happy," shot almost three months after the rest of the picture; exultantly thin, in a black hat and short jacket, she flaunts her spectacular long legs. It is one of the great cheerful numbers of her career. For all the messiness, this is a likable picture, with lots of good songs and dances; they were staged by different hands--Kelly, Nick Castle, and the director, Charles Walters (he choreographed "Get Happy"). With Phil Silvers, Gloria De Haven, Eddie Bracken, Marjorie Main, Hans Conried, and Carleton Carpenter; the dancers include Carol Haney and Jeannie Coyne. Most of the songs are by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon. From a screenplay by George Wells and Sy Gomberg. MGM.
US (1951): Drama
89 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Dore Schary's plug for America uses several pointless episodes about the variety of people and places in U.S. Other segments make up for it in very uneven film. Narrated by Louis Calhern.
US (1952): Drama
96 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4
Kelly (none too convincing in one of his rare non-musicals) plays a soldier returning to Munich to thank family who helped him during WWII; he becomes involved with daughter Angeli and black market gangs.
US (1952): Romance/Dance/Comedy
81 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Forgettable froth involving talent agent Parks and dance teacher Taylor. Mild MGM musical, but Liz looks terrific. Gene Kelly has an unbilled cameo.
US (1954): Musical/Dance
108 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Americans Kelly and Johnson discover magical Scottish village in this entertaining filmization of Alan Jay Lerner & Loewe Broadway hit. Overlooked among 1950s musicals, it may lack innovations but has its own quiet charm, and lovely score, including songs "I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean," "The Heather on the Hill," and title tune. CinemaScope.
Pauline Kael Review
MGM was having an economy drive, and this adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's Broadway hit musical fantasy, which was scheduled to be shot on location in Scotland, was instead done in the studio. Also by executive decree, the director, Vincente Minnelli, had to do it in CinemaScope—which, for dance in studio settings, was disastrous. Gene Kelly and Van Johnson play the two Americans hunting in the Scottish Highlands who stumble into Brigadoon, a magical village that went to sleep in 1754 and wakes for a day each century. Kelly falls in love with a local girl (Cyd Charisse), while Johnson maintains a cynical attitude. Probably the material was too precious and fake-lyrical to have worked in natural surroundings, either, but the way it has been done it's hopelessly stagey. The movie has one sensational sequence, when the action gets away from that damned idyllic village and Kelly and Johnson go to a jangly, noisy Manhattan nightclub with Elaine Stewart; you can feel Minnelli's relief at being able to do something funny and bitchy after staging all those wholesome scenes with grinning men in tartans. Arthur Freed produced; Lerner wrote the script; Kelly choreographed. With Hugh Laing, Barry Jones, Eddie Quillan.
Academy Awards®
UK (1954): War
90 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Static account of navy officer Kelly joining British research group to supervise demolition experiments.
US (1954): Musical/Dance/Biography
132 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
The life of composer Sigmund Romberg is not the stuff of high drama, but the film comes to life in various production numbers with MGM guest stars. Highlights include Kelly brothers' only appearance on film together, Charisse's exquisite and sensual dance number with James Mitchell, and an incredible number featuring Ferrer performing an entire show himself.
US (1955): Musical/Dance/Comedy
102 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Three WWII buddies meet ten years after their discharge and find they have nothing in common. Pungent Comden and Green script falls short of perfection but still has wonderful moments, and some first-rate musical numbers (like Cyd's "Baby, You Knock Me Out" and Dolores' "Thanks a Lot But No Thanks"). Best: the ash-can dance, although clever use of wide-screen is lost on TV. CinemaScope.
Pauline Kael Review
The title is a misnomer. Comden and Green's tart follow-up to ON THE TOWN, and directed by the same team (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen), is like a delayed hangover. The three buddies are now Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd; at war's end they swear eternal friendship and promise to meet in ten years. At their reunion, they discover that they hate each other and themselves, and go looking for the hopes they abandoned. The film's mixture of parody, cynicism, and song and dance is perhaps a little sour; though the numbers are exhilarating and the movie is really much more fun than the wildly overrated ON THE TOWN, it doesn't sell exuberance in that big, toothy way, and it was a box-office failure. As the sickened advertising man, Dan Dailey has the best routine in the film—a Chaplinesque, drunken satire of "advertising-wise" jargon. (To a great extent this is Dailey's movie.) Dolores Gray's role (as a TV star) is too broadly written, but her smooth, glib style is refreshingly brassy and she has a dazzling number—"Thanks a lot but no thanks;" Cyd Charisse is beautiful and benumbed until she unhinges her legs in the Stillman's Gym number. Produced by Arthur Freed, for MGM. CinemaScope.
Academy Awards®
US (1957): Drama/Comedy
80 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Two single parents—American Kelly and Frenchwoman Laage—are drawn together when their children run away from school together. Pleasant but minor family fare, enhanced by location filming in French countryside.
US (1957): Musical/Dance
93 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Kelly's ambitious film tells three stories entirely in dance. Earnest but uninspired, until final "Sinbad" segment with Kelly in Hanna-Barbera cartoon world. Music by Jacques Ibert, Andre Previn, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Filmed in 1952.
Pauline Kael Review
This picture bollixed the career of Gene Kelly, who directed and choreographed it, and probably broke his heart as well: practically nobody saw it. The film consists of three ballets, with some pantomime and also some animated-cartoon work. "Circus," set to Jacques Ibert music, features Igor Youskevitch as a high-wire artist, Claire Sombert as a bareback rider in love with him, and Kelly as a clown in love with her; "Ring Around the Rosy," about a bracelet that goes through various hands, has an André Previn score, and the dancers include Youskevitch, Tamara Toumanova, Tommy Rall, and Kelly; "Sinbad the Sailor" features Carol Haney as Scheherazade and Kelly as Sinbad. The film was beset by difficulties. It had to be made in England because that's where MGM had frozen funds, and, with interruptions for Kelly to do other jobs, the work spread over three years. He was further hampered by front-office directives—for example, the second ballet was danced to a score that the MGM brass didn't like, so Previn had to write a new score to the already filmed dancing. Then the studio put the film on the shelf for another year. There should be an ironic kicker: the picture should be a neglected marvel. But it isn't. Kelly's choreography had always seemed weakest when he became balletic; this picture is set right in his area of least originality. Produced by Arthur Freed.
US (1957): Musical/Dance/Comedy
114 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Charming, sprightly musical involving three show girls who (via flashback) reveal their relationship to hoofer Kelly; chicly handled in all departments, with Cole Porter tunes and Oscar-winning Orry-Kelly costumes. John Patrick adapted Vera Caspary's novel. CinemaScope.
Pauline Kael Review
George Cukor directed this backstage-story musical (it's about a lawsuit over a former showgirl's memoirs), and the color consultant, George Hoyningen-Huené, gave it a classy look, but, with one exception, nobody connected with it was really at his best—not Gene Kelly, who was the star, or the scenarist, John Patrick, and certainly not the choreographer, Jack Cole. (He hit rock bottom, with horrible quasi-cultured numbers.) Even the Cole Porter score is weak, and the whole picture is overproduced. The exception is the tall, blithe, and beautiful comedienne Kay Kendall, who does a funny, drunk "La Habanera" and has a number with Kelly in which she seems to be outdancing him and having an easy, amused time of it. Her role isn't large enough, though. The cast includes Henry Daniell, Taina Elg, Jacques Bergerac, Patrick Macnee, Leslie Phillips, and a bane of 50s movie musicals—the movie executives' idea of "adorable"—Mitzi Gaynor. From a story by Vera Caspary. MGM.
Academy Awards®
US (1958): Drama/Dance
123 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Wood is only adequate as Herman Wouk's heroine in tale of NYC girl aspiring to greatness but ending up a suburban housewife, with Kelly her summer romance.
Academy Awards®
US (1958): Comedy
98 min, Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Bright comedy of married couple Widmark and Day enduring endless red tape to adopt a child. Good cast spices adaptation of Joseph Fields-Peter de Vries play.
US (1960): Musical/Dance/Comedy
118 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Billionaire Montand hears of show spoofing him, wants to stop it, then meets the show's star, Monroe. To charm her, he hires Bing Crosby to teach him to sing, Milton Berle to coach on comedy, Gene Kelly to make him dance. Bubbly cast, snappy musical numbers. CinemaScope.
Academy Awards®
US (1962): Drama/Comedy
104 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Sentimental, well-acted tale of a deaf mute (Gleason) and a young girl in Paris. Simple film, well done; Gleason is excellent.
Academy Awards®
US (1964): Dance/Comedy
111 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Lavish, episodic black comedy by Betty Comden and Adolph Green stars MacLaine as jinx who marries succession of men, each of whom promptly dies, leaving her even wealthier than before. Series of movie parodies is amusing, and performances are uniformly charming, especially Newman as obsessed painter and Kelly as egotistical film star. Based on a story by Gwen Davis. One of the dancers on boat deck is Teri Garr. CinemaScope.
Academy Awards®
US (1967): Comedy
89 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Consistently funny, imaginative adult comedy of Morse trying to teach faithful husband Matthau the ABC's of adultery, with the aid of many guest stars who demonstrate Morse's theories. Joke of it all is that Matthau is married to gorgeous Inger Stevens! Panavision.
Pauline Kael Review
A series of dumb skits on how to cheat on your wife. It's hard to know what's more tiresome about this picture: the camera's fixation on bottoms (and on bosoms that look like bottoms), or the this-movie-is-moral-after-all finish, with the common man at the higher income level (Walter Matthau) deciding he loves his wife too much to be unfaithful after all. There are a few pleasant pantomime bits by Art Carney and Ben Blue. Directed by Gene Kelly, from a script by Frank Tarloff. The cast includes Robert Morse, Lucille Ball, Phil Silvers, Carl Reiner, Jack Benny, Inger Stevens, Sid Caesar, Terry-Thomas, Wally Cox, Jayne Mansfield, Sue Ane Langdon, and many others; what they do is no more memorable than the plugs for brand-name products that are scattered throughout. 20th Century-Fox.
France (1968): Musical/Dance
124 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4
Director Demy's follow-up to THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is a homage to the Hollywood musical, but what it has in style it lacks in substance; contrived story and repetitive Michel Legrand music score surely wear thin, and even Gene Kelly can't save it.
Academy Awards®
US (1969): Musical/Dance/Comedy
146 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Splashy cinema treatment of smash Broadway play with Jerry Herman's popular score. Dolly Levi insists on playing matchmaker, even when it's she herself who gets matched. Overblown and unmemorable, but colorful diversion. Based on Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (previously filmed in 1958). Some prints run 118 minutes. Todd-AO.
Pauline Kael Review
The whole archaic big-musical circus here surrounds a Happening—Barbra Streisand—and it's all worth seeing in order to see her. Directed by Gene Kelly. 20th Century-Fox.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Deeper into Movies.
Academy Awards®
US (1970): Western/Comedy
103 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Jimmy inherits and runs a bawdy house in the Old West. Lots of laughs, but clichés run throughout. Panavision.
US (1973): Comedy
110 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Bright Broadway comedy adapted from French farce suffers in transference to screen, mainly from miscasting of Ullmann as 40-ish New York divorcee, pursued by 20-ish Albert. Glossy, mildly amusing; pepped up by Barnes and Kelly.
Pauline Kael Review
The sort of strained, wisecracking frivolity that can be a hit on Broadway but all too often congeals on the screen. The affair of the 40-year-old Liv Ullmann and the 22-year-old Edward Albert is meant to be romantic and slightly daring, but the miscast Ullmann doesn't have the dryness for comedy. She's much too touching and anxious for her superficial role, and she and the wet-lipped young Albert are a dismaying pair. At this point Ullmann's English was heavily accented, and she articulates her colloquial lines with considerable difficulty. You sympathize with her instead of laughing. Directed by Milton Katselas, from Leonard Gershe's adaptation of the Broadway play by Jay Presson Allen, based on a Parisian success by Pierre Barillet and J.C. Gredy. With Gene Kelly, who looks too old to be Ullmann's ex-husband but has a few likable bits and one inventive moment when he kicks an imaginary child, and Binnie Barnes, Deborah Raffin, Nancy Walker, Rosemary Murphy, Natalie Schaefer, Billy Green Bush, and Don Porter. Columbia.
US (1974): Musical/Dance
132 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 4.0 stars out of 4
Stars host nostalgia bash with scenes from nearly 100 MGM musicals. There are many cherished moments with the above-named stars plus unexpectedly delightful numbers with Esther Williams, Clark Gable (singing and dancing!), Jimmy Durante, and Eleanor Powell, whose challenge dance with Astaire is unforgettable. Only complaint: why shorten the final AMERICAN IN PARIS ballet? Followed by a sequel. Part Wide-screen.
Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4
It used to be said that the trickiest thing about a musical was to figure out a way for the characters to break gracefully into song. Maybe that was all wrong. Maybe the hardest thing was for them to stop, once the singing had started. That's my notion after seeing THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!, a magical tour through the greatest musicals produced by the king of Hollywood studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
This isn't just a compilation film, with lots of highlights strung together. Those kinds of movies quickly repeat themselves. THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! is more of a documentary and a eulogy. A documentary of a time that began in 1929 and seemed to end only yesterday, and a eulogy for an art form that will never be again.
Hollywood will continue to make musicals, of course (although, curiously enough, the form never has been very popular overseas). But there will never be musicals like this again, because there won't be the budgets, there won't be the sense of joyous abandon, there won't be so many stars in the same place all at once, and--most of all--there won't be the notion that a musical has to be "important." The various segments of the film are introduced and narrated by MGM stars of the past (Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly), superstars like Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, offspring like Liza Minnelli, and even a ringer like Bing Crosby (he was a Paramount star, but never mind). They seem to share a real feeling of nostalgia for MGM, which, in its heyday, was not only a studio, but also a benevolent and protective organization ruled by the paternal Louis B. Mayer. Liza Minnelli sounds at times as if she's narrating a visit to her mother's old high school. The movie avoids the trap of being too worshipful in the face of all this greatness. It's not afraid to kid; we see Clark Gable looking ill at ease as he pretends to enjoy singing and dancing, and we see a hilarious montage of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney ringing endless changes to the theme, "I know--we'll fix up the old barn and put on a show!" And then there are the glorious, unforgettable moments from the great musicals. My favorite musical has always been SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, the 1952 comedy about Hollywood's traumatic switch to talkies. THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! opens with a montage of musicals (neatly surveying three decades of film progress), and later returns to the two most unforgettable numbers in the film: Gene Kelly sloshing through puddles while singing the title song, and Donald O'Connor in his amazing "Make 'em Laugh," in which he leaps up walls, takes pratfalls, and dives through a set.
There are other great moments: The closing ballet from AN AMERICAN IN PARIS; Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald being hilariously serious in ROSE MARIE; Astaire and Ginger Rogers, so light-footed they seem to float; Gene Kelly's incredible acrobatics as he does his own stunts, swinging from rooftop to rooftop; William Warfield singing "Old Man River" in SHOW BOAT; Judy Garland singing "You Made Me Love You" to a montage of stills of Clark Gable; Garland, again, with "Get Happy" (and a vignette of little Liza's first movie appearance, aged about three); the acrobatic woodchopper's scene from SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS; and even Esther Williams rising from the deep.
The movie's fun from beginning to end. It's not camp, and it's not nostalgia: It's a celebration of a time and place in American movie history when everything came together to make a new art form.
US (1976): Documentary
86 min, Color and Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
Enjoyable compilation of animal sequences from movies, reaching back to Rin Tin Tin's silent films. Maximum footage from NATIONAL VELVET and LASSIE COME HOME, but everything—from canine version of "Singin' in the Rain" to Bonzo the Chimp being bottle-fed by Ronald Reagan—is great fun.
US (1976): Musical/Drama/Dance/Comedy
133 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly host this inevitable sequel and do some engaging song-and-dance work. Film hasn't cohesion or momentum of its predecessor, but the material is irresistible. This time, comedy and drama are included along with musical numbers—Tracy and Hepburn, Marx Brothers, etc. Most imaginative segment of all is title sequence by Saul Bass. Cut to 126 minutes after initial showings. Part Widescreen.
US (1977): Adventure
106 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 1.0 stars out of 4
The senses reel at this hilariously inept attempt to turn the infamous stunt driver into a movie hero. The Bad Guys plan to have Evel "accidentally" killed in Mexico, so they can use his truck to smuggle drugs back into the U.S.! Don't miss opening scene, in which Our Hero sneaks into orphanage at midnight to distribute Evel Knievel plastic model kits—whereupon one little boy miraculously throws away his crutches! Panavision.
US (1980): Musical/Dance
88 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 1.5 stars out of 4
Flashy but empty-headed remake of DOWN TO EARTH, with Olivia as muse who pops in to inspire young roller-boogie artist. Designed as a showcase for the singer, but the only thing it showcases is her total lack of screen charisma. Kelly (using his character name from COVER GIRL) tries his best to perk things up; even a brief animated sequence by Don Bluth doesn't help. Newton-John's future husband, Matt Lattanzi, plays Kelly as a young man. Songs include "Magic," by John Farrar and title tune by Electric Light Orchestra. Cable-TV version runs 96 minutes.
Roger Ebert Review: 2.0 stars out of 4
XANADU is a mushy and limp musical fantasy, so insubstantial it evaporates before our eyes. It's one of those rare movies in which every scene seems to be the final scene; it's all ends and no beginnings, right up to its actual end, which is a cheat. There are, however, a few—a very few—reasons to see XANADU, which I list herewith: (1) Olivia Newton-John is a great-looking woman, brimming with high spirits, (2) Gene Kelly has a few good moments, (3) the sound track includes "Magic," and (4) it's not as bad as CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC.
It is pretty bad, though. And yet it begins with an inspiration that I found appealing. It gives us a young man (Michael Beck) who falls in love with the dazzling fantasy figure (Newton-John) who keeps popping up in his life. Beck works as a commercial artist, designing record album covers, and when he tries to include Olivia in one of his paintings he gets into trouble at work.
That's okay, because he's met this nice older guy (Gene Kelly) who's very rich and wants to open a nightclub like the one he had back in New York in the 1940s. Kelly used to be a sideman in the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and in a quietly charming fantasy scene, he sings a duet with his old flame, the girl singer in the old Miller band—who, lo and behold, is Olivia Newton-John.
That means both men are in love with the same dream girl, who, we discover, is not of this earth. They team up to convert a rundown old wrestling amphitheater into Xanadu, a nightclub that will combine the music of the 1940s and 1980s. And that is the whole weight of the movie's ideas, except for a scene where Michael Beck visits Olivia in heaven, which looks like a computer-generated disco light show.
Musicals have been made with thinner plot lines than this one, but rarely with less style. The movie is muddy, it's underlit, characters are constantly disappearing into shadows, there's no zest to the movie's look. Even worse, I'm afraid, is the choreography by Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent, especially as it's viewed by Victor Kemper's camera. The dance numbers in this movie do not seem to have been conceived for film.
For example: When Beck and Kelly visit the empty amphitheater, Kelly envisions a forties band in one corner and an eighties rock group in another. The movie gives us one of each: The Andrews Sisters clones in close harmony, and the Electric Light Orchestra in full explosion. Then the two bandstands are moved together so that they blend and everyone is on one bandstand, singing one song. It's a great idea, but the way this movie handles it, it's an incomprehensible traffic jam with dozens of superfluous performers milling about.
The Ortega-Trent choreography of some of the other numbers is just as bad. They keep giving us five lines of dancers and then shooting at eye level, so that instead of seeing patterns we see confusing cattle calls. The dancers in the background muddy the movements of the foreground. It's a free-for-all.
The movie approaches desperation at times in its attempt to be all things to all audiences. Not only do we get the 1940s swing era, but a contemporary sequence starts with disco, goes to hard rock, provides an especially ludicrous country and western sequence, and moves on into prefabricated New Wave. There are times when XANADU doesn't even feel like a movie fantasy, but like a shopping list of marketable pop images. Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed the poem Xanadu but woke up before it was over, a possibility overlooked by the makers of this film.
US (1982): Romance/Musical
100 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4
Lavishly produced but practically plotless romantic comedy about couple (Forrest, Garr) who quarrel, then seek out other partners (Kinski, Julia). Dean Tavoularis's stylized Las Vegas set and the cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and Ronald V. Garcia are astonishing! Unfortunately, pretty images do not a film make. Tom Waits songs fill the sound track while the actors play out one of Coppola's most surreal entertainments. A must for the curious—others beware. Look sharp for Rebecca De Mornay as a restaurant patron.
Roger Ebert Review: 2.0 stars out of 4
Arriving after two years of sound and fury, after all the news items on the financial pages and alarms and excursions in the movie trade press, Francis Ford Coppola's ONE FROM THE HEART is an interesting production but not a good movie. From Coppola, the brilliant orchestrator of APOCALYPSE NOW and the GODFATHER films, it is a major disappointment. This must be the first movie in history to arrive with more publicity about its production techniques than about its stars. Everybody knows that Coppola used experimental video equipment to view and edit his movie, sealing himself into a trailer jammed with electronic gear so that he could see on TV what the camera operator was seeing through the lens. Of course the film itself was photographed on the same old celluloid that the movies have been using forever; Coppola used TV primarily as a device to speed up the process of viewing each shot and trying out various editing combinations. (Or, as an industry wisecrack had it, "He took an $8 million project and used the latest advances in video to bring it in for $23 million.")
If ONE FROM THE HEART is the sort of film this process inspires, then Coppola should abandon it. But of course the process is neutral; films live or die according to an inner rhythm of their own. The most dismal thing about ONE FROM THE HEART is that it lacks those rhythms. It is a ballet of graceful and complex camera movements occupying magnificent sets, and somehow the characters get lost in the process. There was never a moment in this film when I cared about what was happening to the people in it, and only one moment (a cameo by Allen Goorwitz as an irate restaurant owner) when I felt that an actor's spontaneity was able to sneak past Coppola's smothering style and into the audience.
The storyteller of THE GODFATHER has become a technician here. There are chilling parallels between Coppola's obsessive control of this film and the character of Harry Caul, the wiretapper in Coppola's THE CONVERSATION (1974), who cared only about technical results and refused to let himself think about human consequences. Movies are a lot of different things, but most of the best ones are about people and for people, and ONE FROM THE HEART pays little heed to the complexities of the human heart. Indeed, it seems almost on guard against the actors who occupy its carefully architectured scenes. They are hardly ever allowed to dominate. They are figures in a larger pattern, one that diminishes them, that sees them as part of the furniture. They aren't given many close-ups; they're often bathed in garish red glows or sickly blues and greens; they're placed in front of distractingly flamboyant sets or lost in badly choreographed crowds; and sometimes they're cut off in the middle of an emotion or a piece of business because the relentlessly programmed camera has business elsewhere.
I've neglected, in fact, to name the actors, or describe the characters they play. That's not so much of an oversight in a review of a film like this. The two main characters (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest) inhabit a Las Vegas of disappointment, ennui, and glittering lights. For a brief time, they break out of their humdrum lives and meet new lovers (Raul Julia and Nastassja Kinski) who tease them with dreams and fantasies. The underlying story notion, I suppose, is that ordinary little people have a great night on the town, but the night and the town in Coppola's production so overwhelm them that they remain ordinary little people throughout.
There are small pleasures in this movie. One is Harry Dean Stanton's walk-through as the seedy owner of a junkyard, although Coppola resists showing us Stanton's most effective tool, his expressive eyes. Kinski, as a circus tightrope walker, has a beauty much more mature than in TESS and a wonderful moment when she explains "to make a circus girl disappear, all you have to do is blink your eyes." Garr is winsome, but her role makes her thanklessly passive, and Forrest (the Oscar nominee from THE ROSE) is almost transparent here, he's given such a nebbish to play.
Pauline Kael Review
Francis Ford Coppola's jewelled version of a film student's experimental pastiche--the kind set in a magical junkyard. You get the feeling that the movie grew by accretion--that he piled so many visual ideas and comedy bits on top of the small story he started with that it disappeared from sight and the movie turned into something like a poet's salute to the banal silver screen. It's set in a metaphorical Las Vegas (constructed at Zoetrope Studios) on Independence Day, when Frannie (Teri Garr), who works at the Paradise Travel Agency, walks out on the man she has been living with--Hank (Frederic Forrest), who runs Reality Wrecking. The holiday is treated like Mardi Gras, with crowds dancing through the street. All we're asked to care about is whether Hank, who's in love with Frannie, will win her back. Or, rather, this story being negligible, what we're asked to respond to is Coppola's confectionery artistry. The movie is very pretty and sometimes eerily charming, but the effects don't have any emotional meaning in terms of the characters, and the video editing techniques that Coppola uses seem to destroy the dramatic definition of the scenes; a day later the film is as blurry in the mind as the memory of a psychedelic light show. With Nastassja Kinski, Raul Julia, Harry Dean Stanton, and Lainie Kazan. From a script by Armyan Bernstein and Coppola; there's a song track, with Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle telling us the meaning of what we're seeing and wailing words of wisdom. Dean Tavoularis designed the production. Zoetrope.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Taking It All In.
Academy Awards®
US (1985): Musical/Dance
105 min, Color and Black & White
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Too many mediocre selections, flat introductions by five guest hosts … but there's still much to enjoy in this dance compilation, from Fred and Ginger's "Pick Yourself Up" to WEST SIDE STORY. Added curio: a Bolger number cut from THE WIZARD OF OZ. 1980s selections that end the film seem lumbering and ludicrous compared to the marvels of movement that precede them. Part Widescreen.
Roger Ebert Review: 3.0 stars out of 4
There is a sense in which it is impossible to dislike THAT'S DANCING! and another sense in which movies like this--made by splicing together all the "good parts" --are irritating and sort of unfair to the original films. Given the choice of seeing SINGIN' IN THE RAIN again or spending the same amount of time looking at scenes from SINGIN' and maybe sixty other films, I'd rather see the real movie all the way through. But THAT'S DANCING! is not setting an either-or test for us; what it basically wants to do is entertain us with a lot of good dance scenes from a lot of good, and bad, movies, and that is such a harmless ambition that I guess we can accept it.
The movie has been put together by Jack Haley, Jr., and David Niven, Jr., and it recycles Haley's formula in THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! (1974), the original slice-and-dice anthology from Hollywood's golden ages. There also has been a THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT, PART 2 (or "too," I seem to recall), and the law of diminishing returns is beginning to apply. Sooner or later, we'll get THAT'S ALL, FOLKS! In the first movie, for example, we got Gene Kelly's immortal title dance number from SINGIN' IN THE RAIN; in the first movie, we got Donald O'Connor's equally immortal "Make 'em Laugh" sequence; and that leaves Kelly and O'Connor's only somewhat immortal "Moses Supposes" number for this film. Pretty soon we're going to be getting THAT'S WHAT'S LEFT OF ENTERTAINMENT!
THAT'S DANCING! shares with the earlier movies an irritating compulsion to masquerade as a documentary, which it isn't. The tone is set by Kelly's opening generalizations about the universality of dance, etc., while we see National Geographic outtakes of dancing around the world: tribes in Africa, hula skirts in Hawaii, polkas, geisha girls, and so on. Kelly is later spelled by such other dance analysts as Liza Minnelli, Ray Bolger, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Sammy Davis, Jr., all of whom can dance with a great deal more ease than they can recite pseudo-profundities.
There is, however, a lot of good dancing in this movie, including rare silent footage of Isadora Duncan. We see Busby Berkeley's meticulously choreographed dance geometries, the infinite style of Fred Astaire, the brassy joy of Ginger Rogers, the pizazz of Cyd Charisse and Eleanor Powell, a charming duet between Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Shirley Temple, and a dazzling display by the Nicholas Brothers, who were the inspiration for the dance team played by the Hines brothers in THE COTTON CLUB. The movie is up-to-date, with John Travolta from SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and footage from break-dance movies, FLASHDANCE, and Michael Jackson's THRILLER. But perhaps its most pleasing single moment is a little soft-shoe by Jimmy Cagney, who was perhaps not the technical equal of Astaire, but was certainly on the same sublime plane when it came to communicating sheer joy.
One of the insights offered in the narration of THAT'S DANCING! is that Astaire was responsible for the theory that you should see the entire body of the dancer in most of the shots in a dance scene, and that the scene should be shown in unbroken shots, as much as possible, to preserve the continuity of the dancer's relationship with space and time. That's the kind of seemingly obvious statement that contains a lot of half-baked conclusions. True, you have to see the dancer's whole body to appreciate what he's doing (look at the disastrous choreography in Travolta's STAYING ALIVE, which inspired Ginger Rogers to call it a dance film--"from the waist up"). But you also need the cutaways to show the faces of the dancers, and the chemistry between them, as when Astaire and Rogers have their enchanted dancing lesson in SWING TIME. True, shooting the whole thing in one unbroken take preserves the integrity of the visual record--but what about the sensational dance sequences in FLASHDANCE that were achieved by literally cutting between different dancers, all doing their own specialty? All that really matters is the end result.
What conclusions can be drawn from the movie's survey of sixty years of dancing on screen? I can think of one, sort of obvious and sort of depressing: Style has gone out of style. New dancers in recent dance movies are in superb physical shape and do amazing things on the screen, but they do not have the magical personal style of an Astaire or a Kelly. They're technicians. And there's another thing: They don't really dance together. A lot of them are soloists, or two soloists sharing the same floor. When Astaire and Rogers danced together, they danced together. And that is maybe what dancing is finally all about.
US (1994): Documentary
108 min, Color
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Yet another collection of marvelous musical moments from the MGM library, spiked by some never-before-seen footage eliminated from the finished films, including a discarded Fred Astaire dance routine (shown in split-screen with its retake), Judy Garland singing Irving Berlin's "Mr. Monotony," Cyd Charisse and Joan Crawford singing and dancing to the same prerecorded number, Lena Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" from CABIN IN THE SKY, and much, much more. Video release has expanded versions of some numbers cut for the theatrical print. Part widescreen.
Roger Ebert Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
The first two THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! movies pretty well plundered the MGM vaults of classic moments from the Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals—an age that ran from the 1930s until the 1950s and was more or less synonymous with MGM's own ascendency as the lion king of Hollywood studios. Settling down for a screening of THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! III, I expected to watch the archivists scraping the bottom of the barrel. Instead, they've discarded the barrel altogether, so to speak; most of the scenes in this film never found their way into movie theaters, and have languished for years, unseen, in the studio's vaults.
The result is a genuinely fascinating film, one that may tell more about MGM musicals, and aspects of American society, than a film devoted to still more highlights from musical numbers that DID make their way into films. The reasons why many of the sequences in III were cut from films are many, having to do with commerce, taste, race, sex and running time. They are interesting today because, in many cases, they are brilliant; in other cases, because they are awful; in some cases, because they are revealing; and in all cases because if it were not for this film we would never have seen them. This is like permission to rummage all by ourselves in MGM's cellar.
The clips are introduced and sometimes commented on by stars who still survive from those legendary days, none more ageless and poignant than Lena Horne, who shows a scene from CABIN IN THE SKY (1943) in which she sang in a bubble bath. The scene was cut, she says quietly, because in those days it was thought too "risque" to show a black woman in a bubble bath.
We also hear her wonderful performance of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY (1946), and then see a scene from SHOW BOAT (1951), in which the song is performed by Ava Gardner. Horne was originally considered for the character played by Gardner, but rejected because of her race. The difference between the two song versions is a hint of what MGM lost with that decision.
On other occasions, the studio played fast and loose with musical numbers, snipping them out and recycling them later. A split-screen technique is used to show Cyd Charisse and Joan Crawford, both performing TWO-FACED WOMAN. Charisse's version was cut from THE BAND WAGON (1953). It's slinky and sexy. The same year, the song was re-used in Crawford's TORCH SONG, where she performs it in an odd costume and "tropical" makeup. This version—the one that was used—is grotesque. (The crowning detail is that neither actress actually sang the song; it was dubbed for both movies by a singer named India Adams.)
By using earlier versions of scenes that later made it into films, the movie allows us to compare performances. Usually that means noticing the differences. With Fred Astaire, it means noting the incredible similarities. Astaire filmed the song-and-dance number "I Wanna Be a Dancin' Man" for THE BELLE OF NEW YORK (1952), wearing sport clothes. The studio decided he would look better in formal clothes, and re-shot the scene. Watching the two numbers side by side, we realize that Astaire was so perfectly rehearsed and so disciplined that he was able to reproduce the earlier dance routine down to the smallest detail—while seeming effortlessly improvisational, of course.
Other stuff you will see here and nowhere else: scenes shot by Judy Garland for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN before she was fired for personal problems and replaced by Betty Hutton. Garland singing "Mr. Monotony," later cut from EASTER PARADE. The "March of the Doagies" production number from THE HARVEY GIRLS (1946). A Debbie Reynolds solo of "You Are My Lucky Star," cut from SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. A fabulous dance duet between Astaire and Charisse, cut from BRIGADOON. And, from an MGM experiment with "novelty acts," a musical scene involving a trio of female acrobats who did double-jointed contortions while singing. (We don't need an explanation to figure out why that one was cut.)
One of the most sparkling presences in the film is Esther Williams, the swimming champion who starred in a series of incredibly successful musicals shot on, and under, the water. She narrates documentary footage to show how she and her co-stars were apparently able to do choreographed swimming for entire musical numbers without ever taking a breath. It's another co-host, Mickey Rooney, who most successfully evokes the atmosphere at MGM's Culver City lot in those days. MGM, it was said had "more stars than are in the heavens," and a talent-laden roster of producers and directors to keep them busy. What is most remarkable, watching this time, is to reflect that the studio was so rich in talent and imagination, even its outtakes are worth seeing, half a century later.