There's No Business Like Show Business

There's No Business Like Show Business
December 16, 1954
Fox
Musical, Historical
DVD
C-

SEE Marilyn Monroe in very revealing costumes that somehow got past the censors!
SEE Ethel Merman and Mitzi Gaynor in costumes that are remarkably unflattering!
HEAR Ethel belt out most of her lines!
HEAR no less than nine renditions of "Alexander's Ragtime Band," seven of them back to back!
SEE AND HEAR a mother-daughter salute to tattoos!
SCRATCH YOUR HEAD as you try to figure out who Dan Dailey is and how he got the lead!
FEEL Ethel and Dan's pain as their son played by Johnnie Ray comes out to them...as a priest!
YOUR MIND WILL REEL as
-Marilyn plays at least four different takes on one character, none of them convincing!!
-Donald O'Connor courts Marilyn with breadsticks!!
-Donald sings about men chasing women until the women catch them, only to be himself pursued by female Greek statues come to life!!
-Mitzi's marriage and pregnancy are treated like minor events!!
-Decades pass and the '30s and '50s melt into one, so that musical styles, phones, and women's slacks are amazingly anachronistic!!

Yes, My Friends, there is indeed no business like show business!!!

Thomas Martin played a waiter in All About Eve as well.  James Conaty was in AAE, too.  Fred Aldrich was in Sunset Blvd.  Charlotte Austin was in Marilyn's Monkey Business.  Kenner G. Kemp and Tommy Walker appeared in Singin' in the Rain.  Aladdin, George Chakiris, Stanley Hall, and Ron Nyman were in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  Colin Kenny and Matt Mattox were in both The Band Wagon and Gentlemen Prefer.

Sandra Spence would be Pa's secretary in Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki.  Lee Patrick would play Mrs. Upson in Auntie Mame.  Hal Taggart would be in Mary Poppins.

Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain
April 11, 1952
MGM
Musical, Comedy, Historical
DVD
B

A sometimes joyous musical, as well as a funny look at the transition from silents to talkies.  You could quibble that the rich Technicolor (my first color movie without Judy Garland, although of course it's MGM) is wasted in the scenes that are purporting to be moments in black & white movies.  (After all, if in real life Harpo Marx had to change his red wig to a blond-looking one, why would someone bother to dye a fur pink?)  I have a more serious problem with the "Broadway Melody Ballet" sequence (hereafter referred to as BMB), which, although only thirteen minutes long, brings things to a crashing halt, being not only a bore but stylistically an anomaly.  (It's "modern," i.e. supposed to be 1920s American rather than pre-revolutionary French, but it looks like the sort of bloated 1950s Hollywood/Broadway number that has not aged well.)  The rest of the numbers are much better, with my favorite being the playful, zippy "Good Morning."  In that number as well as many others, such as "Fit as a Fiddle," I like how two or three people (Gene Kelly with Donald O'Connor and/or Debbie Reynolds) are doing the same or similar steps, but with individual touches.

Without BMB, I still probably would give the movie only a B+, because it doesn't cross over into the lovability of such different movies as The Wizard of Oz and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.  It's very entertaining, and I can see why Reynolds became a big star, but I don't feel I want to stay in this world after the movie ends.

Kay Deslys was in The Big Store.  Julius Tannen, who's in the sound demo short, was Mr. Rafferty in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.  Brick Sullivan was in It's a Wonderful Life.  Mike Lally was in Citizen Kane and Wonderful Life.  Angi O. Poulos was a peddler in Easter Parade, too.  Jimmy Bates, Patricia Jackson, and Joi Lansing were also in Easter Parade.  Gloria Moore was Rosie Kettle in the earliest Ma and Pa movies.

Rita Moreno, then about 20, is almost unrecognizable as red-haired Zelda.  She would appear in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation the next year.  Cyd Charisse, who's the seductress in BMB, would have a much larger role in The Band Wagon.  Paul Maxey and Joseph Mell would go on to Monkey Business.  Dee Turnell, who was in Copacabana and Easter Parade, would go on to The Band Wagon.  Lyle Clark, Fred Datig, Jr., Peggy Murray, Charles Regan, Joette Robinson, and Jimmy Thompson would all also be in The Band Wagon.  Shirley Wilson would do Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as well as The Band Wagon.  A. Cameron Grant and Judy Landon would be in Gentlemen Prefer, too.  Margaret Bert and Kenner G. Kemp would be in Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair, while Jon Gardner and Timmy Hawkins would be Benjamin and Teddy Kettle in Ma and Pa Kettle in Waikiki.  Tommy Walker would go on to There's No Business Like Show Business, Ann McCrea to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and John Logan to Some Like It Hot.  Robert Fortier, who plays a gangster in BMB, would turn up almost three decades later as the town drunk in Popeye.  Sue Allen would be a voice in the chorus of Heidi's Song.