Let's Make Love (1960)

Let me first say that I watched this movie in three installments at the gym.  This led me to wonder really inconsequential things, like, why does Amanda (Marilyn Monroe) knit in the first section of the movie but not in the second section?
"What are you making?"
"I haven't decided yet.  It keeps my hands busy."
It turns out she does in fact knit in the third section... she knits sequined yarn in a musical fantasy dreamed by Jean-Marc Clement (Yves Montand).  Phew.  I was worried about continuity.
I also noticed that I was not in any rush to go back to the gym to find out what happened to the characters.

Let's Make Love is your standard "I must pretend to be someone I am not so that you will see the true me and love me.  And then you will quickly (VERY QUICKLY) forget how humiliated you felt by my lying and fall into my arms" movie.  Sometimes this works for me, sometimes it doesn't.  This time it didn't.  Maybe because I just couldn't get myself to care at all about the characters.

Poor Jean-Marc Clement.  He is a French billionaire, and someone is making an off-Broadway musical that uses ten seconds of its stage time to make a joke about him!  His PR man convinces him to visit a rehearsal to show that he can laugh at himself, thus making other people laughing at him seem a little more friendly.  And there on stage at the rehearsal, slithering down poles in a sweater and panty hose, is Amanda (Marilyn Monroe).  Jean-Marc is told he bears a striking resemblance to Jean-Marc Clement, Amanda makes disparaging remarks about the "real" Jean-Marc Clement, and Jean-Marc decides to assume a new name and get cast in the show as himself to get close to Amanda.

More songs, skimpier outfits, Jean-Marc making hoity toity remarks...  and so on.

Highlight for me:  When Jean-Marc needs to learn how to dance (so to better woo Amanda), Gene Kelly comes to his office and gives him a lesson.  Not a great scene, but got me to perk up and pay attention.  Cameos from Bing Crosby and Milton Berle as well.

Two stars, and I don't want to see this again.

Bells Are Ringing (1960)

This movie has all the right ingredients for a fun comedy... Judy Holliday, silly plot twists... But the songs almost kill it. I guess when you put Dean Martin in a movie, you have to make him sing something. The songs are ridiculous and often painful, though. They are vehicles for predictable and sometimes nauseating rhymes. So three stars for Judy Holliday and some funny ideas... subtract one star for dreadful songs... Two stars. I might be willing to watch it again.

Ella (Judy Holliday) works for an answering service called "Susanswerphone." She is very good at taking people's messages and making wake-up calls. What she is not good at is dating. Susan keeps setting her up with nice men, and the dates all end up being disastrous - everything short of setting herself on fire. Ella just finds herself unable to talk to men in person. "You know, you're a good listener. That's an art in itself... helps to build the other person's ego," says her clueless date at the beginning of this film. Ella suffers through the date, of course managing to catch her dress on fire on the way out of the restaurant. Ella shines on the phone, though. She manages to get involved in all of her clients' life stories. She even falls in love with one and has to put on lipstick before she calls him. Sadly, though, she speaks to him in an old lady voice, and he calls her Mom. Leading us to the first dreadful song:

*I'm in love with "Plaza 0 double 4 double 3" She muses about whether he's 6'4" or 4'3". Oh, she even sings part of the song to a canary.

*And then the client, Jeffrey Moss (Dean Martin) sings to himself in the mirror: "You gotta do it" Seems he's a struggling playwright.

The plot picks back up again when the ladies of Susanswerphone are accused of being a front for a "lonely hearts club." There must be no meeting up with any male clients or "you and the madam are going to be taking calls at the detention home."

It turns out there is something nefarious going on at Susanswerphone, though. A bookie charms Sue into letting him run what she thinks is a record company out of the office. Really, he has developed a code in which different bets are called different composers, pieces, etc. This leads us to the next scary song:

"It's a simple little system," a partially spoken word song in which many sketchy bookies sing about their tricky code.

Jeffrey Moss leaves his phone unplugged one day, missing his wake-up call, and we get to watch Ella crawl around on his floor after she breaks in to wake her up. He wakes up, doesn't know she's "Mom," and a romance begins. How does she know so much about him? "I'm very intuitive." What will come of her having met up with a male client?

*"So that's what he looks like..." Sadly, the comic scene above includes this dreadful song before Jeffrey wakes up.

Ella teaches Jeffrey that you can say hello to strangers on the street. He is so in love after this ("If I couldn't believe in you after everything that's happened to me today, I'd crumble away like an old sponge cake."), that he just has to sing...

*"I got a girl," which includes the lyric, "she's got a lot to recommend her for a girl."

Then we have a song-writing dentist, the "cha cha cha," a dance in the park, a very bizarre song about dropping names, and another scary number called "He's in love with Melisande Scott."

Judy Holliday rescues the movie again near the end, though, with some great physical comedy. I'm upping my verdict to "would definitely watch again," but I will be laughing at, not always with.

Follow the Fleet (1936)

Oh, I hope I never run out of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movies. In this movie they play Bake and Sherry. Bake is in the Navy, Sherry is a dancer who once rejected Bake's marriage proposal. When Bake comes into town on shore leave, he runs into Sherry, and they both rethink their separation. Bake messes up Sherry's very important audition, though, and all bets are off. How do you say sorry? Give someone a monkey and screw with their next big audition, not necessarily in that order.
There was also a bizarre side-story involving Bake's friend Bilge, played by Randolph Scott. After having one great date with Sherry's sister Connie, he felt that he was still free to play the field, and she felt that they had made an amazing connection and were getting married. Bilge's thoughts on Connie's thoughts? "She's a swell kid, but she's serious... She's sappy like you [Bake] - she wants to get married." And oddly none of Connie's friends told her that she was being a bit silly fixing up her father's giant boat just for Bilge and waiting for his proposal after just one date. There wasn't even any word from him while he was back at sea, and still she waited. She was told oh, he's just being silly... He'll figure it all out in time. She is told to fight for her man. But she practically imagined him! Nonetheless... do you think she got him in the end?
While watching the movie, my dad was busy looking up information about it. Apparently the dress worn by Ginger Rogers when she and Fred Astaire danced to "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (above) was so heavily weighted that she had to learn how to move while wearing it. And apparently she bonked Fred Astaire in the face. It was weighted so it could then effortlessly do things like this:
...which is of course a very important part of a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie.

Despite my love of the actors, I really want to give this movie one star. But I'm going to give it two stars due to the scene where they navy guys are all practicing for a benefit show on the ship deck, and some of the men have to be "dames." I really don't want to see it again, though. There were entertaining moments, but I think the whole buzz behind this movie is that it has what is considered to be one of Astaire and Rogers's best dance numbers (with the 25 pound dress). But that was not enough for me. I still love them in general, though!

Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964)

Frank Sinatra, singing mobsters, Robin hood references... a perfect movie for me, or so I thought. I just can't give this movie more than one star, and I'm not sure I could ever sit through it again. I could definitely sit down with David and make him watch the silliest songs with me:

*The boardroom "one for all" song about how great it is to be a mobster, in which we realize that Guy Gisborne is played by Peter Falk, and that Peter Falk can't sing

*The song about playing pool: when Little John (Dean Martin) runs the table and joins Robbo's (Frank Sinatra's) gang
*Will Scarlet's (Sammy Davis, Jr.'s) song about how much he loves the sound of gun shuts... sung as he and Robbo's gang shoot up Guy Gisborne's gambling den (Barbara: "Tap dancing combined with shooting is just really weird.")

*The song about how bad a dresser Allen A. Dale (Bing Crosby) is, sung by Sinatra, Martin, and Crosby, as Crosby keeps jumping in the walk-in closet to put on funny clothes

*The song about how wonderful Robbo is for giving money to the home for orphaned boys... sung by... Bing Crosby and a troupe of orphans wearing hats like these ladies:

*The song about the evils of "Mr. Booze," sung in order to throw the police off the trail of the hidden gambling/drinking den

*And last but not least, the song sung by Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin dressed in Santa costumes when they have to go into hiding for their connections to a money laundering operation

There was one redeeming feature that made me laugh with and not at the movie: Occasionally the mobsters disappeared someone by putting their dead body in a cornerstone of a new building. This led to funny scenes at building dedications. But, why was this movie made? Has anyone else seen it?

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Life is grand... Dorothy (Jane Russell) and Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) are off to Paris, and who happens to be on their ocean liner? The US Olympic team! Dorothy gets to cavort with the Olympians (there is even a gymnastics dance), while Lorelei says goodbye to her trusting fiance who will be staying at home.
Hilarity ensues as Lorelei becomes rather friendly with a rich old owner of a diamond mine (he gives her his wife's prized diamond tiara!), and Dorothy becomes smitten with a private detective hired by the father of Lorelei's fiance to track her every move.
The women have to become very crafty in order to evade jealous fiances, angry wives, incriminating rolls of film, and French prison sentences. "I can be smart when it's important, but most people don't like it." Doesn't that sound just like a Marilyn Monroe line?

Such a fun movie.

"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"

So yay! Four stars! Would watch again!

Roberta (1935)

Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers... of course I had to see this movie. Huck Haines (Astaire) travels with his band, The Wabash Indianians, and his friend John Kent (Randolph Scott) to Paris for a gig. Unfortunately, almost the second they step off the ocean liner, the owner of the club where they were supposed to play becomes horrified to learn that they are in fact Indianians and not Indians. The band tries to woo the club owner with a bizarre act in which they become a human piano...but to no avail.

With no more gig, John and Huck rush off to find John's aunt Roberta, who just happens to own a fashionable clothing store in Paris. Roberta is delighted to see her favorite nephew and says that she will try to help them find a new gig through her connections. It turns out that the band doesn't need Roberta's direct help, though, because out in the lobby they find the Comtesse Scharwenka (Ginger Rogers) complaining loudly and obnoxiously about a dress that has not come out quite right. The Comtesse is merely pretending to be Polish nobility to make her singing act more intriguing. Really she is from Indiana and happens to be the long lost close friend/next door neighbor of Huck. And she can get the band back into the very night club from which they were tossed for not being Indians. And I haven't even mentioned that Irene Dunne plays Stephanie, who works for Roberta. Stephanie and John fall in love at first sight, complications to follow. One of the largest complications seems to be that John is a "hick" with an attitude about fashion, and Stephanie is a Russian princess in exile. Hmmm.

The dancing was, as usual, exciting, especially a very cool tap dance pictured above and a dance to "I Won't Dance." And then there was the highly entertaining fashion show. My favorite quote from the fashion show is actually from my roommate Barbara: "Oh, a bird died." There were a lot of fur and feathers.

Other good fashion quotes from without the movie include:

"It's more stimulating to the imagination if clothes clothe." (John is VERY against skimpy dresses, and this fact leads to some of the plot twists of the movie.)

"[Women] can pack their own junk." (about a dress with pockets)

The movie also swung towards schmaltzy, though. Stephanie sings mournful songs, Roberta dies, everyone is tragically misunderstood. All except Huck and the Comtesse, that is. Two stars for my favorite dancers. Not sure I could watch again.

The Sound of Music (1965)

When I was three we owned this record and I remember not understanding that I was not Maria. There was no clear separation between me and the movie. I was The Sound of Music and The Sound of Music was me.

We had this record:

And I don't remember a time when I didn't know every word to every song. I'm quite sure that I learned the words "dapper" "naive" and "ken" from 'Sixteen Going on Seventeen' and I'm sure that those three words alone could have been responsible for my reputation as a precocious three-year-old.

I've been to the sing-along Sound of Music but until two years ago I didn't own the movie. I never had. In a weird way it felt redundant. I own this movie in my head. If I'm knocked unconscious and start to ascend a tunnel of light I'll probably wake up singing "Climb ev'ry mountain" - it's that kind of thing for me.


Did I mention that the Mother Abbess is played by Peggy Wood? That's my grandmother's name.

I am going to put a limit on the ways I can love this movie, I am limiting it to ten.
These are a few of my favorite things:

1. The Sound of Music - the music. This movie is full of happy songs. There are a lot of dark, sad moments to this movie - the girl doesn't fit in at the Abbey, where she lives, she doesn't fit in at the place where she's sent to be a governess, but she's always so exuberant! The opening score is played over shots of the Swiss Alps and it's just this feeling of awe you can't help, which is exactly what Maria wants to sing about all the time.

"My heart wants to skip like a brook that trips over stones on its way, to sing through the night, like a lark that is learning to pray!" Put simply, it's a show-tune hymn, and a great one. People should sing it in church.

Because this is essentially a movie about music bringing people together and saving them from Nazis, there are too many other great songs to name and yes a few slow ones that I didn't care for as a child but now appreciate. And then there's Edelweiss - if your heart doesn't break when they sing that song at the end of the movie, I'm revoking it!

2. How do you solve a problem like - Nuns. How can you not love nuns? They are like the opposite of a pin-up poster - they are everything womanly that is not sexual. They're motherly and wise, girlish and innocent, demanding and patient, they nag, they gossip, they whine, and in the end of the movie they are heroic and clever and sneaky and you realize they are made of steel. Nuns! (someone is going to say, clearly I have never gone to Catholic school - clearly I have not).


3. Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes. The kids in uniform! They are great - kids marching in a line and in matching costumes were so appealing when I was a kid. It was like watching a kid review or a kid army. And I still love the matching curtain-clothes - don't put it past me to have my own version for my kids.


Apparently Christopher Plummer was quite the player...
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/12/21/091221ta_talk_parker

But back to the list:

4. Uncle Max
He's a smooth cat, Uncle Max - the talent agent and perennial mooch. I bet the real Uncle Max moved to Hollywood to escape the Nazis and became someone like Sam Goldwyn. True, he's only out for himself but that makes him somewhat impartial. He cracks mean little jokes with the baroness but ultimately his fondness for a good musical act trumps his friendship with her and her lovely money. And if not for him, how would they ever have escaped at the end? Gotta love Uncle Max.

5. There's a ball. They throw a ball. They're just like - you know what would be fun? A big party in that big ballroom. And then they throw a ball. Complete with formal dinner and wonderful outfits and entertainment and Austrian folk dances.

6. There's a wedding. Any movie with a ball and a wedding is a winner in my book. The wedding is awesome, too - just her train alone is enough to bring a tear to my eye, but the organ playing "how do you solve a problem like maria" - all I can say is - why on earth didn't I think of having that as my processional? Jessica, take note, you still have a chance!

7. Free the children manifesto. Children hanging from trees and overturning rowboats. This is how life was meant to be lived. Up until the turn of the century, children were to be "seen and not heard" - kept apart from their parents in upper-class homes and trained to act like miniature adults. Fraulein Maria is a renegade, she's a local girl who ran around in the woods singing out loud to the mountains like a crazy person and she believes firmly that all children should be allowed to run around acting like crazy people. Children appreciate and respond to this message. They like to be crazy.

8. Love story #1 - star-crossed lovers Franz and Liesl. They meet in secret and fall in love - they have their first kiss during a thunderstorm, for pete's sake! Then he becomes a stupid Nazi - in part because the Austrians see him as a boy but the Nazi's will give him authority to rat people out. So instead of growing into a principled man, he'll become a soldier for the first army that will take him. Liesl can't believe he'd betray her family and her father and almost costs her family their lives because of it. Poor Liesl and, for that matter, poor Franz. He's just a boy being manipulated by a deeply evil regime.

9. Love story #2 - The Captain and Maria - he's her boss, he's handsome and wealthy and authoritative and precise. She's a free-spirited would-be nun who can't stop herself from contradicting anyone, even authority figures. But when they sing, they can't help but see each other as kindred spirits. Most of all, she truly loves his children, even to the point of risking her own job to argue with him on their behalf. She makes him realize that he loves his kids, too, and needs to be a better father to them. And she's just a simple country girl but you realize, he's really not fond of the city anyway - he likes nature and folk songs and traditional Austrian things - including traditional Austrian girls like Maria.

10. Sad/Happy Ending. So the Nazis invade Austria, but the family escapes. The real-life family survived, came to America, made their living performing, were happy and successful. But the Nazis are real, and they go on to do terrible things, and not everyone escaped. Austrians who had to give up their nation and leave their homes were the first victims of Hitler, and their hardships seem minor compared to others - but just the glimpse of the totalitarianism of the Nazi occupation - the flags everywhere, the spies, the insistence on a public show of loyalty and deference...sends a chill down your spine. Europe should have taken notice sooner. The Nazis started out by breaking spirits and banishing families and ended by bringing more evil into the world than many people had ever imagined existed in the human heart. When they sing Edelweiss, a folksong, they get to the "bless my homeland forever" part and you realize it's a secret protest. The voices in the crowd join in and sing and you sense the Nazis are not going to be able to keep these people down. Probably Victor Laszlo was in the crowd. Surreptitious subversion of cultural imperialism, rule-breaking nuns, hiking over the Alps to freedom...it's inspirational on top of everything else.

How can you not love this movie? I think I watched it once a year when I was little, and I'm sure I could sing you all of the songs if asked.

Four stars. Clearly another movie to watch over and over.

Flying Down to Rio (1933)

Ah, movies from the thirties. This is what I should be watching more of. Roger (Gene Raymond) is the conductor of a band and quite a player. When he spots Belinha (Delores Del Rio) winking at him from her table during a performance, it doesn't take him very long to leave the conducting to Fred (played by Fred Astaire) and sweep her up into his arms for a dance. News travels fast throughout the hotel. When the first comment, that Belinha, the niece of a wealthy Brazilian woman, is dancing with a musician, eventually reaches Belinha's aunt, the comment has run through the rumor mill and turned into "Belinha is dancing with a gigolo." The aunt rushes down to the dining room to put an end to the dance, and a romance/battle of words has begun. I was loving the movie... the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, funny banter, amazing hats...

I was so happy... until I got to the spanking and the racism, all of which happened within a span of about five minutes. I will explain:

The spanking: Belinha needs to get home to Brazil fast. Her father needs her. It just so happens that Roger is a pilot, and that he and the band already happen to be going to Rio to play at the opening of a new hotel there. Roger convinces Belinha to fly in his two person plane (although he at first doesn't tell her he is the pilot and disguises himself in his flying gear so her aunt will let her go with him). Belinha is perfectly happy to discover that Roger is the pilot, but when Roger has to make an emergency landing on what they believe to be a remote desert island, all turns sour between them. Roger makes his engine trouble last by purposely losing an essential hose. Then he plays romantic music to get Belinha to make out with him. And then... she says something along the lines of, "No no no...I cannot do this...My family has arranged a marriage for me...I am engaged...We must never see each other again." Roger doesn't take well to Belinha's protest, Belinha slaps him, and then he throws her over his knee and spanks her a whole bunch of times reprimanding her for telling him off. Needless to say, when they have to spend the night on the island, she stays far away from him.

The racism: The morning after the spanking, Belinha looks into the trees and sees four or five black men looking back at her. She runs into Roger's arms screaming about wild men and cannibals. When Roger goes back to investigate, he finds out that she was not seeing cannibals, she was just seeing resort employees. They are in Haiti right next to a golf resort. This was supposed to be a funny joke.

The rest of the movie did have more entertaining moments, though. The hotel happens to be owned by Belinha's father, Roger happens to be friends with the fiance, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance, all while Roger and Belinha spar and can't take their eyes off of each other.

The best part of the movie was definitely when the band saves the hotel by creating the most spectacular opener ever: scantily clad girls dancing and doing acrobatics on the wings of planes in flight. At one point some of their clothes are even carried off by parachutes. At one point one girl almost plummets to her death and has to be caught by people on the plane below. Video below:

I also love the way in which Belinha's fiance finally gives her up...a parachute is involved. Two stars for silly acrobatics and fun. I could see myself watching this again, despite the horrifying parts.

Young at Heart (1954)

Do not be fooled by Doris Day's cheeriness, nor by her silly songs on the beach.  Do not be fooled by the light-heartedness of three sisters playing music in the parlor and laughing about men.  This movie is actually dark and tortured.  The Tuttle sisters are all so happy in their lovely Connecticut home, playing music with their father, having witty conversations with Aunt Jessie (Ethel Barrymore), and laughing about their men.  When a composer named Alex arrives to stay, all is still happy and frivolous. Even the fact that all three sisters fall for Alex does not seem serious.  But enter Barney (Frank Sinatra), a troubled pianist, and all goes downhill fast.  Lori Tuttle (Doris Day) ditching Alex at the alter to run off with Barney is only the beginning of the horrifying drama.  Oh, one star.  I was annoyed with this movie and the characters long before it got dark.  The star is because Frank Sinatra sings multiple songs.  I will not see this again, but I am curious about the 1938 movie Four Daughters, of which this movie was apparently a remake.

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

So disappointing. Especially when I was so excited to see it... Yet somehow this movie won an Oscar for it's musical score AND was nominated for best picture. Fascinating. I am giving it one star for good singing. I suppose I will probably watch it again, because I own the Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra box set, but Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On The Town will get many more viewings than this one.

Joe (Gene Kelly) and Clarence (Frank Sinatra) are on a four day leave from the navy. As usual, Kelly plays the womanizer and Sinatra plays his naive but adorable follower. Joe is trying to meet up with a mysterious Lola to make the most of his four days on shore, but is foiled first by Clarence following him to try to learn how to get a girl and second by a little boy (Donald Martin) who has run away from home to join the navy. Joe and Clarence are roped into bringing the boy home, where they meet Aunt Susan... the love interest.

Clarence asks for Joe's help to woo Aunt Susan, but of course another woman falls for Clarence, and Joe falls for Aunt Susan. I feel I can write that without giving anything away. This is a very predictable movie. Along with all the wooing, Joe and Clarence have promised Susan a singing audition they can't actually get for her, and the little boy becomes completely attached to Joe. Despite the fact that this movie won an Oscar for its score, I can't seem to remember any of the songs. There is a conductor, Jose Iturbe, who makes an appearance as himself in the movie... so I remember there was some good music...

Fun Science Fiction Fact: David was all excited that the little boy is played by Dean Stockwell, Al from Quantum Leap. We spent a little while rewinding trying to recognize his face.

Also please note that this is the second movie I have seen so far this year in which an actor cavorts with Jerry the mouse.
Gene Kelly just had to get a really odd dance sequence into this movie somewhere.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

Having loved On the Town, I needed to see more Kelly & Sinatra films. A baseball musical turned out to be a great choice. Not only did it have the same two main characters, but it had a number of the same character actors as well. Oh, joy!

Eddie (Kelly) and Denny (Sinatra) are baseball players and vaudeville performers. At the beginning of the movie we get to see their last act of the vaudeville season before they rush off to Florida for spring training with the Wolves. Once back with the team, they sing the strangest song about their fake exploits while on the road with the vaudeville troop, featuring a verse about a college girl who was so love struck that she stopped studying and...
"Her teachers wouldn't pass her
so she just turned on the gasser
now the sweetest girl at Vasser's
in the cold cold ground."
And oddly enough, because Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelley can sing anything, it sounds nice.

Right after being welcomed back to the team, the men find out that a new owner, K.C. Higgins, will be arriving shortly to take over management of the team. Everyone is angry to the idea of being put under tighter control by a new owner. Of course in a comedic twist of fate, K.C. Higgins turns out to be a Katherine (Esther Williams). I have only ever seen one Esther Williams musical before (and loved it), so I did not recognize Katherine as Williams when she first showed up. It wasn't until the guys watched Katherine swimming in the pool as she sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" that I realized who I was watching.

Katherine plans to clamp down on the players, giving them fines for coming in late and even offering them baseball advice. Eddie can't stand this, and the movie goes on to follow the familiar plot of woo the woman and pretend to love her so that you can get her to do what you want. Denny is assigned the job of wooing Katherine, which he does quite easily by singing a song. Unfortunately for him he goes off to bed, and Eddie rushes off to finish the wooing job, also by singing to Katherine. Denny watches horrified as Eddie appears to be stealing his new girl, not believing his pal Goldberg that Eddie is only wooing in his name. "Then what, I suppose she'll kiss him, and he'll come back and kiss me." I started to get a little worried about how easily Katherine was fooled by Eddie's act. Then Katherine charged Eddie the $50 fine for breaking curfew, and I felt much better.

Then of course much hilarity ensues. Shirley (Betty Garrett) falls for Denny at a game and stalks him mercilessly, Eddie and Katherine appear to fall for each other, all as they dance, sing, play baseball, start fist fights, have clam bakes, lie to each other, get into trouble with gamblers, try to protect each other in all the wrong ways, have a great chase scene around the bases, and dance and sing some more.

Next time I go to a game, forget the Red Sox hat... it is finally time to break out my grandmother's old hats.

This picture does no justice to the technicolor pink in the movie. And this is just one of the many wonderful hats that Katherine and Shirley wear throughout the movie.
Four stars! Four stars! Yes, it's silly and sexist, but four stars! Must see again!

Dangerous When Wet (1953)

Oh, a swimming musical. Why have I not been watching these?

The Higgins family is a family of swimmers. Every single morning Pa, Ma, Junior, Katie (Esther Williams), and Suzie jump up seemingly at the crack of dawn to do some laps in the local swimming hole.  And, it being a musical, they sing a wonderfully cheery song as they get ready to swim.  When Katie is spotted by a somewhat lecherous salesman one morning, the family ends up with the chance to swim in a race across the English Channel in order to promote his product.

Although the rest of the Higgins family deems the English Channel too cold, Katie continues to train.  One day, during a foggy training session she loses sight of her salesman coach in his rowboat and is pulled aboard the sailboat of the charming and dashing Andre (Fernando Lamas - who became Esther Williams's husband).

There are passionate looks, vows to stay away for the sake of the race, and several minor scandals.  On their first date Andre gives Katie a bikini as a gift!  Andre invites Katie over to his house to meet his mother, and his mother isn't there!  And she stays anyways!  And they go swimming together!

The movie even contains a dream sequence in which Katie swims with Tom and Jerry.

I searched and searched for a photo of the great goggles worn in the movie... no photo to be found. Just picture the most wonderful gigantic swim goggles imaginable... and then double their size. Oh how I want those goggles.

And then of course there is Katie's heroic swim.

Three stars. I would love to see this again. And bring on the Esther Williams movies. Are they all so wonderfully silly?

Holiday Inn (1942)

I want to go to Holiday Inn. But only if they promise that they've given up on the blackface acts. Be prepared for a really racist celebration of Lincoln's birthday, featuring the line, "Who was it set the darkie free?" Seriously.

So, I don't want to be at Holiday Inn for Lincoln's birthday. But I do want to ride in a horse drawn carriage instead of a taxi to be there to see Marjorie Reynolds and Fred Astaire dance with each other. Or just to see Fred Astaire do his Fourth of July cherry bomb dance on his own.

When we meet them, Ted (Fred Astaire) and Jim (Bing Crosby) are friends and fellow dancers.  After learning that Bing has wooed away his fiancee, another dancer, Bing goes off to his giant house in the country where he begins to renovate and create Holiday Inn.   He plans to spend most of each year on vacation, opening the inn just for fantastic performances on holidays.  Bing meets Linda (Marjorie Reynolds) at a performance in the city, and she comes out to the inn to audition for him.  They rehearse for performances, fall in love, and sing "White Christmas" together.
Sadly for Jim, Ted shows up drunk, having lost his dancer girlfriend.  Jim is convinced that if Ted meets Linda, he will try to steal her away both for a dancing partner and a girlfriend.  Ted is just this kind of friend.  Ted does meet Linda...he dances with her drunk... but once sober he cannot remember what she looked like.  He spends the next year showing up for holidays to search for his mystery woman, and Jim does everything in his power to keep them from meeting again.
Much dancing and hilarity ensue.  (I'm probably taking a ballroom class this spring.  Can I please come out of the class dancing like this?)

So, I'm sure I'll see this again some other Christmas season.  There are so many parts I like.  If Lincoln's birthday had not existed, I would be giving the movie four stars.  How much can I forgive old movies?  Jury is out.

For Me and My Gal (1942)

I have a new favorite movie, and it is For Me and My Gal. It has a great love story, great dancing and singing, an actual plot that is interesting, and dramatic moments that don't make me cringe. It's black and white and the musical numbers are all performed on the stage so even people who don't like musicals might like this one. Other good points: lots of trains in this movie and it's a movie about show business, which is always awesome.

However, I attribute a lot of the charm to the chemistry between the stars. After seeing Summer Stock I was struck that the chemistry between Garland and Kelly was so good. I was surprised because I had previously thought of Garland usually as very young (you have that impression of her I guess from all those young roles like Dorothy and the Andy Hardy movies). Kelly is always so mature - even when he plays a young man he's so slick - even when he plays awkward it's smooth - so I was sort of surprised that they were playing opposite each other, but it worked.

Then I had to watch the Pirate - not much chance for chemistry there - but when they did have a quiet moment, it seemed like they were trying to be sincere. Most of the time they weren't playing it serious, though, it was pure comic over-the-top nonsense.

But this movie is - - perfect. It's Gene Kelly's film debut, and he's amazing. Judy Garland got him the role after she saw him perform on Broadway so there is some of the reason for their warmth for each other. They had some respect for each other before they even started working on the film.

I read a post on IMDB that described Garland as "fragile" and Kelly as "muscular" but I disagree - Garland is anything but fragile, she seems like she could survive anything, and HAS survived everything. When she talks to her kid brother and talks him out of quitting medical school you get the feeling that they might have been through a lot more together than they say. But she is vulnerable, and that plays so well on screen where movie stars seem so perfect. That was always her genius - ever since "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" she can make us feel that something is missing for her and we want it, too. She can wring the emotion out of any song, which is what makes her so great.

Kelly on the other hand is all slickness and polish with moments of softness thrown in a classic lover-not-a-fighter - when his smooth character reveals a moment of weakness you are touched because he's usually so brash and confident.

It's a great combination, and they are well cast for the roles in this film.

It's really kind of epic following them through a decade or so as they meet, join forces as a vaudeville act, face the war together, split up and eventually reunite.

There are great dancing scenes, some cute vaudeville acts, and I can't even recall a particularly offensive one among them - unless you count the one that acts out a man purchasing a woman-doll and taking her home. But on a scale of one to blackface musical number in White Christmas, it's a one.

Four stars - for great music - all classic American songs from the vaudeville era - great performances in the dramatic roles by all the actors - great costumes - only some of the stage ones are embarrassing, most of the others are great and some I really really want to own - and a great romantic story. Will watch again right away.

The Pirate (1948)

Where to begin?
Judy Garland is Manuela -- a romantic young girl in a strange hat. She has imbibed the legends of a pirate named Macoco and has decided that she would do anything for him if he abducted her, as she dreams he will someday do. Meanwhile she is engaged to fat, boring mayor Don Pedro.

Gene Kelly is Serafin -- a strolling player - a.k.a. actor - who wanders into town and falls in love with Manuela. Not surprisingly, he decides to pretend to be Macoco to seduce her.

Come to think of it - this has a plot not unlike an opera. It's unlikely, silly, and melodramatic and allows for a lot of big dramatic dance scenes and songs.

Cole Porter wrote the music so it's a little surprising that none of the numbers are very memorable, even with Judy Garland singing and Gene Kelly dancing. Well I take that back - the obtuse dance number with J.G. as a donkey and G.K. as a pirate in tight black shorts is memorable - if not in a good way. He cuts her ears off with a sword. It is no less bizarre than the dance in the middle of Singing in the Rain or Oklahoma. And therefore, just as memorable.

Overheard passing between us as we watched:

Jess:“Oh, do you think there will be a long, boring dance sequence?”

Amy: (about JG's plaid basket hat) “I nominate this for worst costume ever. If she put fruit on her head it would match better.”

Jess: “Sorry, I just can’t help laughing whenever I see their clothes.”
Amy: “I was hoping she would have changed.”

Jess: (about Gene Kelly's first outfit) “Amy Amy! Look at Gene Kelly! Look at Gene Kelly! Look at Gene Kelly! Look at Gene Kelly!”

Jess: “Wait, can you go back… I think he just sang, ‘When I arrive in any town, I look the ladies up and down,’ but I’m not sure.”
Amy: "That's what he said."

Jess: “Again with the wrapping paper hats."
Amy: "I’m liking this one, though.”

Jess: “Look at the poles, do you think there will be a stripper dance?
Amy: "I think Gene Kelly is going to dance with the poles. Yep, there he goes, Gene Kelly’s version of a stripper dance.”

Jess: “I do NOT like his hat.”
Amy: “I’m anticipating that his costume will become better when he becomes a pirate.”

Amy: (After commenting that JG's character has a lot in common with Kiera Knightly's haracter in "Pirates of the Caribbean.") “I wonder if they watched this before they wrote that script. I mean, not that that’s a hard plot to come up with.”

Amy: “Why has she got her hair in a sock?”

Amy: “I really like this outfit. It makes up for all the other outfits.”
Amy: “I want her skirt.”
Amy: “Ok, you have to admit, though, the outfit is awesome.”

About the wedding dress:
Jess: “Oh, oh.” (with extreme displeasure)
Amy: “I love it.”

Jess: “How long is this movie?”

Jess: “Here it is! Here’s the obtuse dance sequence… and he’s wearing the best shorts ever.”
Amy: “He has nice legs, though. We never see his legs.”

Jess: "How do you make it show how much time we have left?"
Jess:"Ok, it's almost over."


Jessica gives it one star because she can't give it zero and she "really thought it was a dreadful dreadful movie, anything that was entertaining about it was not intended."

I give it two stars - one half each for Gene Kelly and Judy Garland's charm, without the benefit of a really good part to play. One star for the costumes. There were many charmingly silly costumes that I think were meant to be charmingly silly.

I think it's a movie that must be watched by fans of either big colorful musicals, Judy Garland or Gene Kelly - if only because it is classically bad big Hollywood musical. However, we agree that we will not watch it again.

My Fair Lady (1964)

My problem with this movie has always been that Audrey Hepburn is not believable as a street wretch. She sounds more like she is putting on airs as the street wretch than she does as the fine lady. It's just hard to watch - kind of like the accents in Oklahoma!

I hear that Julie Andrews played the part on Broadway very well, but she didn't get the part in the movie so we'll never know if she would have been better. I'm very fond of JA so I'd like to believe that she would have been better, but, then again, I'm very fond of AH, too, and that doesn't make me like her for this part any more.

Anyhow, I also can't stand the rest of the characters...the whole play just kind of grates on me, only I like some of the music. I could have danced all night, in particular. Actually, maybe that's the only song I like.

Anyhow, one star, I really can't be bothered with this one any more. Will not watch ever again.

The Harvey Girls (1946)

"When Fred Harvey pushed his chain of restaurants
farther and farther west along the lengthening
tracks of the Santa Fe, he brought with him one of
the first civilizing forces this land had known - - - -
THE HARVEY GIRLS.

These winsome waitresses conquered the west as
surely as the Davy Crocketts and the Kit Carsons
- - - not with powder horn and rifle,
but with a beefsteak and a cup of coffee.

To these unsung pioneers, whose successors today
still carry on in the same tradition, we sincerely ded-
icate this motion picture."



There is some truth in this grandiose introduction to the film. (The real mystery to me is why they have to run a word off the end of a line on a title card? Was kerning not invented yet?)

I really liked this movie, better than Oklahoma. Maybe it's because Judy Garlands character plays a tough girl who dreams bigs, takes risks, stands up to armed men, and can handle disappointment. Unlike simpering Laury from Oklahoma who has half-hour-long dance-number nightmares. I guess that's not fair to Laury, she does have her fiesty moments. I just like Judy Garland's I guess.



Judy plays a girl who answers an ad for a mail-order bride and on the strength of some beautifully-written letters heads west. On the train she meets a bunch of Harvey Girls - waitresses for a new Harvey Restaurant. After a number or two on the train, she arrives with the girls in bumfu- I mean Sand Rock - only to discover that it's no a humble rancher that has written her letters, but a saloon owner. The probably illiterate and goofy-looking rancher comes clean and they call off the wedding, so Judy becomes a Harvey Girl.



There are a couple of great songs, like the "Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" which is very reminiscent of the Trolley song in "Meet Me in St. Louis" (wild singing romp around a train with Judy Garland? I'm in!)

I like the bit characters. There is the ornery old maid cook who I think was a regular on I Love Lucy, too, because she is very familiar.




Angela Lansbury plays a cooch dancer in love with the saloon owner. She does a number "Oh You Kid" in which she is like Mae West only smoother and slicker. It's awesome. She's a buxom blonde. Kim had to be given a fairly good clue before she guessed that this was the star of "Murder She Wrote". (Me: Guess who that is? Kim: I don't know, Merle Oberon? Me: No Kim: I don't know Me: I'll give you a clue, she plays a detective Kim: Murder She Wrote!)

I'm really fond of this movie. Four stars. I only planned to skim through it since I watched it once last year, but I'm happily watching it again.

Oklahoma (1955)

Until you have seen a troupe of tap-dancing men in chaps, you haven't seen anything - no I take that back - until you have seen an interpretive-ballet gunfight, you haven't seen anything.


I knew almost all the songs from Oklahoma, thanks to my best friend and, well, the whole world. But up till today, I'd never seen the movie. My good friends gave me a Rodgers and Hammerstein collection for my birthday, so I figured it was high time I watched it.



At first I thought that this movie seemed so gay because the song "I'm Just A Girl Who Cain't Say No" seems made for a drag queen to sing. Until the next song...which also seemed so camp it was asking to be remade in drag. That's when it dawned on me: I had seen this movie before - or parts of it. One night in a gay bar, between two pieces of fascinating hard-core gay porn, was this even more fascinating mash-up of electronic dance music and the ballet numbers from Oklahoma. And it's instantly recognizable as Oklahoma - cause what other cowboy musical is there?

Initially, we thought the DVD player was broken, because the volume was turned down and it seemed stuck on a title card. But once we turned the volume up it turned out that the first five minutes of the movie is a title card that says "Oklahoma Overture". This is followed by five minutes of credits and a long slow tracking shot through a cornfield. Obviously they wanted to pay homage to the theatrical score. Also, during intermission, there is a title card that says "Oklahoma Entre' Acte" useful if you need to pee and can't find the pause button on your DVD player's remote. Finally at the end is a card reading "Oklahoma Exit Music" so you have a score as you walk off to bed.















If that is not enough to bore you, there are also two or three very long interpretive ballets. In one of them, the two main characters are replaced by dancers who stand in for them as they act out the entire plot. At this point you could
a) opt to watch only the ballet-within-a-play and skip the rest of the movie
b) skip the ballet because you'd like to watch the rest of the movie
c) skip the ballet and the rest of the movie

I would not recommend option a unless you are a fan of pantomime. A BIG fan. The only reason I would recommend b over c is the closing number, Oklahoma! gives me chills. It is just an awesome musical number. One of the best of all time, I'll wager.

Other than that, there are some fun moments, outrageous costumes, the great character Annie - unprecedented as far as I have seen - a stubbornly silly girl who stubbornly stands up for her right to sleep around.



I like the female lead, but the male lead is one of those full-grown men playing a young man that never seems quite right. Also the leads have a habit of singing "graahnd" as if they were brought up in Boston and then singing "I keer" in a bastardization of an Oklahoma accent. It's awkward, if not outright offensive.

I did enjoy the movie, but less than I had expected, based on the music.

Two stars, one for the costumes, one for the title number.

Torch Song (1953)

I don't know how to sugar-coat this: this one is pretty awful.
Musical. But Joan Crawford does not sing. Every single musical number is awful - especially the one where she plays in - I guess you would call it "brown face"? She's impersonating a Cuban, I think.



It's the supposedly touching story of an arrogant star whose heart is conquered by a blind piano player.

It's maudlin, there are a lot of long speeches - including an interesting one in which the blind piano player explains to a fellow jazz musician that he can never love her because he met her after he became blind and therefore can't picture her face...interesting but, at the end of the day, I really couldn't see why he would want the impossible harpy whose face he can picture as opposed to a really nice girl who he can't see.

If you must watch, I advise you to fast-forward all musical numbers.

One star, for her costumes. Will not watch again.

PS - remind you of anything? Like "The Miracle Woman"? That movie is better.

One Touch of Venus (1948)

Two stars. If a friend really wants to watch it with me, I would probably be willing to watch it again, but I will need to be doing something else while I watch!

I’ve been wanting to re-watch Mannequin (very much NOT a classic movie, as it stars Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, James Spader, and lots of 80s music) for a long time now, so when my dad told me about One Touch of Venus I was really excited. A statue of Venus comes to life in a department store and falls in love with a lowly window dresser (who I will be calling "doofy guy"). When I read on the box that it is a musical romantic comedy, I was even more excited. I could only imagine the kinds of songs they would sing together.



It turns out the movie is only loosely a musical. Venus sings "Speak Low" a few times to woo her reluctant doofy guy and to call him back to her. The song also works well for a parallel plot involving doofy guy's fiance and doofy guy's best friend. There is a really silly number about finding the right man and then one more entirely forgettable song later on. So forgettable I can't even remember where it fell. Just that there were three songs.

I also wasn't sure if Venus was really in love with doofy guy, or if she just thought he would make a good pet with all of his "Golly you’re beautiful" comments. At one point, while trying to make Venus feel tired, he almost managed to hypnotize himself. Venus wasn't really any less doofy than her guy, though, so maybe it was a good match.

The high points:

*Secretary to the head of the department store, Molly, played by Eve Arden... the only character I could stand... although she was forced to change her ways to get her guy

*the fact that there was a model home in the department store, and that part of the story took place there... this is why I love IKEA...model rooms are fun...dollhouses for grownups

*Venus's very original way to help doofy guy evade arrest... She used her magic to turn the arrest warrant into a string of paper dolls. Then, when the cops still seemed to want to arrest her doofy guy, she used more magic to make one of the cops act like an owl.

*this quote about a fiance who can't wait to pick a wedding date: "Why, even when we have dinner together, the only thing she has is rice."