Starring Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, Vera-Ellen, and Arlene Dahl
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Music by Harry Ruby; Lyrics by Bert Kalmar and others
For our first two reviews this week, we salute red-headed beauty Arlene Dahl. She's nowadays mainly known for her television work, but did do movies as well from the late 40's through the early 70's. At this point, she was still an ingenue with MGM who was occasionally farmed out to low-budget studios for bigger parts. This was her second role in a major musical, having debuted in the biography My Wild Irish Rose. How does she look here, alongside three of the biggest names in musicals at MGM? Let's begin onstage at a vaudeville theater with dance partners Bert Kalmar (Astaire) and Jessie Brown (Vera-Ellen) as they give us our first number, and find out...
The Story: Kalmar really does love performing, but he's also a big fan of magicians. His attempt at a magic act is disrupted by a clumsy, baseball-loving stagehand (Skelton). The stagehand is Harry Ruby, who's looking for help with a song he wrote. Kalmar finally joins him when he hurts his knee and can't dance. They seem to do well, but Kalmar walks out when he realizes Ruby was the one who ruined his act. Ruby has the song published anyway, and it becomes a big hit.
The two continue as songwriters, even doing Broadway shows. Ruby helps bring Kalmar together with Jessie, while they try to keep Ruby from consorting with the wrong women. It's when Ruby convinces a backer to withdraw from Kalmar's not terribly good play that Kalmar really blows his top and the two split. It's up to Jessie and Ruby's lady Eileen Percy (Dahl) to reunite them.
The Song and Dance: The simple story and small cast makes this a refreshing contrast to the previous MGM composer biographies 'Till the Clouds Roll By and Words and Music. Cameos are limited to Gloria DeHaven playing her mother Mrs. Carter DeHaven and Debbie Reynolds as (and with the voice of) Betty Boop inspiration Helen Kane. The emphasis is right where it should be, on the four talented leads.
Astaire and Skelton put some of their best performances as the feuding songwriters whose hobbies sometimes clash with their work. Astaire won a Golden Globe; he would later say this was one of his favorites of his movies. Keenan Wynn has a few good bits as their energetic agent too, especially when he gets drunk and spills the beans about Kalmar's play.
Favorite Number: We open with a delightfully simple tux-and-cane soft shoe duet for Vera-Ellen and Astaire, "Where Did You Get That Girl?" "Mr. and Mrs. Hoofer at Home" is an instrumental non-vocal parody of what happens when dancers marry, with Astaire and Vera-Ellen performing some fairly dexterous moves as they depict a dancing domestic scene. The duo get two even better romantic duos later, "Nevertheless" onstage when Jessie and Bert reunite, and the gorgeous "Thinking of You" in the world's most massive cruise ship room.
Gloria DeHaven looks every inch the Broadway beauty her mother must have been as she introduces what's now likely Kalmar and Ruby's best-known song, "Who's Sorry Now?" Reynolds gets to have her own fun when she "boop-oop-a-doops" as Kalmar and Ruby work on their latest song...and they're so impressed, she ends up doing "I Wanna Be Loved By You" with a nervous Carleton Carpenter onstage. Dahl's solo is "Love You So Much," and she's radiant strutting down that staircase in bubble gum pink and waving a huge feather fan among the boys. Vera-Ellen's big number "Come On Papa" is a French spoof with her in scanty costumes that's also done with an appreciative male chorus.
Trivia: Kalmar and Ruby were good friends of Astaire's from their vaudeville days. Kalmar died in 1947, after giving MGM permission to make the film, but before filming began. Ruby lived until 1974 and was a consultant on the film.
The song "Three Little Words" was actually written for the 1930 film Check & Double Check.
"Thinking of You" and "Nevertheless" were huge hits after this came out, as was the movie itself.
For all that was fabricated, Ruby really was a huge baseball fan, and Kalmar was indeed a magic aficionado. Kalmar did have a bad knee injury that ended his vaudeville dancing carrier and forced him to turn to songwriting.
What I Don't Like: Like the other musical biographies of this era, this is complete fiction. Kalmar and Ruby were friends all their lives. They did occasionally work with other partners but never had a dramatic split like the one depicted here, and certainly not over their hobbies! They didn't discover Helen Kane booping on the sidewalk, either. She'd been doing that routine for years when she sang "Wanna Be Loved By You" in the Broadway show Good Boy. Ruby didn't invade Kalmar's magic act, and he never sabotaged Kalmar's play.
They could have done more with the ladies. Vera-Ellen does have some fun bits with Astaire (I love her expressions when he takes credit for her ideas or keeps going on about magic), but Dahl doesn't appear until the second half and has very little to do beyond "Love You So Much." Oh, like the other MGM composer biographies, there's no historical accuracy whatsoever. It looks like 1950 for the entire movie.
The Big Finale: I'm going to agree whole-heartedly with Astaire on this one. This is my second-favorite Astaire movie at MGM after The Band Wagon. Highly recommended for fans of the four leads, dance nuts, or someone looking for a lower-key MGM show.
Home Media: Easily found on DVD and streaming.
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