Movie of the Week XVIII

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

I am a little hesitant to write about this movie, not because it isn’t great (it is!) or because I don’t love it (I do!), but because it is so well known. I have attempted to talk about lesser known movies rather than classics that people might have seen before, like Casablanca or Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz (all 1939, which makes that year a pheonomenon of movie awesomeness.)

If you have ever seen a classic movie musical, chances are it is Singin’ in the Rain. That movie is usually ranked as the best movie musical of all time, and it just as frequently lands highly on the best movies of all time lists. I don’t want to over-hype it, although it would be hard to be disappointed with it no matter what I said. It really does live up to its reputation. It is one of those movies that I think I must have dreamed, that I would not have dared to imagine. The cast is fantastic: Gene Kelly (sort of a jerk, apparently, but magic onscreen):

a young young young Debbie Reynolds (she was 19):

the hilarious and extremely talented hoofer Donald O’Connor:

Jean Hagen (no, that is not the way she actually talked),

and Cyd Charisse (!).

The plot is real, not fluff to transition from one song to another. The costumes and sets are beautiful; it is funny and clever and satirical. Almost every number in the film is a classic. Who hasn’t seen Gene Kelly singin’ in the rain? Or at least this iconic image of him?

Someone said that the "Singin’ in the Rain" number is joy made visible. I agree. But “Good Morning” is fantastic, perhaps my favorite in the movie, and "Beautiful Girls" is a wonderful pointless number that includes a fashion show, so what is not to like?

So I won’t try to sell you on this film (more than I already attempted) but instead will give you some odd tidbits about it.

The movie was written around a song catalog. Arthur Freed, a producer of musicals at MGM, asked Betty Comden and Adolph Green to write a screenplay incorporating his catalog of songs, most of which were from the late ‘20s and ‘30s. All of the songs had appeared in movies before, so there is nothing new in Singin’ in the Rain. Can you imagine if a musical was released featuring the songs from Chicago, Moulin Rouge, and High School Musical? It would be weird, I think. But the songs in Freed’s catalog weren’t so tied to a plot; they are more like vaudeville numbers of classic standards than a plot driven “Cell Block Tango.” "Singin' in the Rain," for instance, was in one of the first feature length "talking pictures," Hollywood Revue of 1929 (you guessed it, 1929).

The plot of the movie is inspired by the original moment of the songs--the late 1920s and early 1930s, which was the transition from silent movies to "talkies." The plot revolves around two silent movie stars (Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen) who suddenly find themselves having to talk onscreen.

Gene makes the transition fairly seamlessly (besides some stupid improvised dialogue that he could get away with when there was no sound recording) since he is a talented singer/dancer/actor, but Jean has more trouble. Her voice is screechy and nasal and unpleasant. So, like many real actors in the 1920s, Jean’s career seems to be over since she cannot make the switch to sound movies. This is an image from an early scene in the movie when Gene makes sure that Jean never speaks. She keeps trying to talk to the audience at the movie premiere and he keeps jumping in before she can start. No one knows that she has a terrible voice, and Gene doesn't want anyone to find out.

The film is a movie about movies and Hollywood, so there are lots of inside jokes and references to real Hollywood history, which makes it fun for weirdos like me. For example, the movie opens with one of Gene and Jean's silent films. Gene and Jean are playing a romantic scene when suddenly be-capped and be-feathered men with swords attack the castle. Gene does some acrobatic fighting and wins the day, returning to Jean's embrace.

The funny thing is that Gene's fight choreography is almost exactly the same as what he did in The Three Musketeers (1948) five years earlier. He does the same leap off a balcony, the same backward bend, the same stabbing with his rapier. He is parodying the earlier role. Funny.

Stanley Donen (first Gene Kelly's assistant then an excellent director) and Gene Kelly directed the movie, so they are able to play around with Gene Kelly's movie past, besides choreographing some exceptional dances.

Gene meets Debbie, who insults his acting style, saying it is just "a lot of dumb show." He is intrigued by this young woman who doesn't seem charmed by his movie star persona. Later, she pops out of a cake, Gene talks to her again, Jean (who loves Gene) sees the conversation and becomes very jealous. It ends with some cake throwing.

Debbie runs away, Gene tries to find her, Jean makes sure he doesn't...and then sound arrives in Hollywood. Suddenly Gene and Jean's careers are threatened. They try to make a movie with sound but it is terrible.

A favorite scene occurs when they are trying to hide a microphone on set so that they can hear Jean Hagen. They try hiding the huge silver microphone in a bush, then on her shoulder, then on the bodice of her dress where they pick up the sound of her heartbeat. Here is the seamstress sewing a bunch of flowers on her dress to hide the microphone.

Jean's voice is too awful for talkies, so they decide to use Debbie's voice and have Jean lip sync. And the movie rolls on from there...

Debbie was just a baby, 19 years old, set to dance with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor, two incredible and incredibly demanding (in Gene’s case) pros. She did not have a lot of dance training and certainly nowhere near Gene and Donald’s experience.

There is a lovely story that after a particularly horrible rehearsal with Gene (he was not terribly understanding) Debbie hid under a piano on an empty soundstage and cried, convinced that she could never learn the steps, never mind perform them next to the great Gene Kelly. Well who should find here there but Fred Astaire? He danced with Debbie for a while that afternoon, helping her perfect the moves. After that she was confident enough to continue.

I don’t know how true that story is, but I like to believe it. Years and years after the movie, Debbie Reynolds said that "making this film and surviving childbirth were the two most difficult experiences of her life."

Jean Hagen modeled her voice and performance on Judy Holliday, the actress that the producers wanted for the part. Judy Holliday was not available to do the movie, but she recommended Jean Hagen, who had been her understudy on Broadway in "Born Yesterday" (which Holliday did a film version of in 1950). Hagen and Holliday had also acted together in Adam’s Rib (1949). There is Hagen on the left and Holliday on the right.

Hagen did an impression of Holliday playing the role of the shrill, uncouth, uneducated woman in Born Yesterday. It is uncanny how much Hagen sounds like Holliday...Hagen got the part in Singin' in the Rain, for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Interesting: When Gene performed the "Singin’ in the Rain" number, he had a 103 degree fever. It think that they filmed it at night because they needed so much water to make the "rain." They couldn't film when people might be watering their lawns or something and risk losing their "rain." To make the puddles and raindrops show up better on film, they mixed milk with the water to give it a nice sheen.

Ironic: the movie is about illusion and faking voices and stealing other people’s talents and work. So, it is interesting that the lovely deep speaking voice that Debbie Reynolds’ supplies for Jean Hagen in "The Dancing Cavalier” is actually Jean Hagen’s real voice and not Debbie’s at all. The “Would You?” song and the "You Are My Lucky Star" song are not sung by Debbie Reynolds but a contract singer at MGM, Betty Noyes, who was not credited for her work. So Jean Hagen lip syncs a song that Debbie Reynolds lip syncs and is really sung by someone else.

The movie scoffs at and eventually condemns such trickery, but at the same time it reinforces it. It reveals movie tricks onscreen in the plot but simultaneously uses and conceals the same tricks--as in the first "Lucky Star" number when Gene Kelly uses all the wind machines and lighting and fog tricks in a soundstage to serenade Debbie Reynolds. Guess how many articles and books have been written about that? A lot.

Weird: Donald O'Connor's big solo number, "Make Em Laugh," is almost an exact copy of Cole Porter's "Be A Clown" song which Gene Kelly and Judy Garland performed in The Pirate (1948). It is such blatant plagiarism that it is sort of a joke. Still a funny number, though. Much better than the "Be A Clown" one.

I really like Donald O'Connor in this movie. He gets to sing and dance and be funny. The role was written for Oscar Levant, (Gene Kelly's sidekick in An American in Paris (1951)) but I am glad that O'Connor got it. The "Moses Supposes" number is particularly excellent, and I can't imagine Levant doing it. He would have been playing the piano instead of dancing, I guess.

Speaking of dancing, one of my very favorite dancers is in this movie. Cyd Charisse is excellent excellent excellent. She wears a famous green dress and slinks around with Gene Kelly in a wonderful dance.

She was taller than Gene (not that hard) and if you watch closely you will see that she never stands at her full height. Her knees are bent or she is on the floor or he is lifting her. He didn't like his partners to be taller than he was.

Despite this height issue, I think they dance wonderfully together. They are both athletic and strong and Cyd has a lovely graceful quality, too. Fred Astaire called her "beautiful dynamite." Perfect.

They have another dance in a dream sequence. This one is far more balletic--no more slinking or kicks. I don't know how they managed to perform the dance with what must have been a crazy powerful wind machine going. Cyd's white train is always in the air, and sometimes almost completely vertical. Yet they stay on their feet and dance without looking like they are caught in a tornado.

Cyd Charisse said that Gene was a very powerful dancer--her husband could always tell if she was working with him on a movie because she would come home with bruises from his athletic choreography and strong grip. Ouch.

So there it is. Thanks for reading, and do watch it if you get a chance.

Goodbye.

Movie of the Week XVII

First, I AM HOME! I am home, I am home, I am home. FOR GOOD. I have never been so thrilled to be back in America and back at home.

I will write more about our ski trip to Italy in December, my last weeks in the Czech Republic, and my return home, but not until after Christmas. Right now I am just enjoying being home!

But I could not let Christmas come and go without this movie:

White Christmas (1954)

Despite the title, it really is not a "Christmas movie" in the usual sense. In fact, the only reason it is called "White Christmas" is because the Irving Berlin song by that title appears a few times in the film, crooned by Bing Crosby. The finale of the movie takes place on Christmas Eve, too, but there is not the typical overt "Christmas lesson" about the importance of family or sharing or being thankful that appears in other holiday films. So my urgency about posting this before Christmas is not entirely justified...It is not so much the holiday as the fact that this is one of my favorites and I can't wait to do a blog entry about it.

The movie starts with Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) performing in a makeshift Christmas Eve show in the middle of the war zone in Europe in World War II. (The man in the middle is a general. He becomes important later.)

Phil saves Bob's life and they become pals, and after the war ends they pair up to make a successful theatrical team and then very successful producing partners.

While producing and performing a show in Florida, they receive a letter from an old Army buddy asking them to go see his sisters perform and give them some advice. They aren't very excited about the prospect, but they go and are very impressed with the Haynes Sisters. Smitten, even.

And with fans like that, who wouldn't enjoy the show? They sing the song "Sisters, Sisters" which naturally my sisters and I were obsessed with and performed at our school talent shows.

Anyway, Bob likes Betty (Rosemary Clooney), and Phil likes Judy (Vera-Ellen.) The women reciprocate. It is fortunate that they do not both fall for the same sister or the same man. That would make it a very different kind of movie.

Phil and Judy begin conspiring almost immediately to get Betty and Bob together. Phil wants the workaholic Bob to get married so that Phil can get a vacation, and Judy wants Betty to get married so that Judy can be more independent. Betty is sort of a "mother hen" to Judy's "chick."

Phil and Judy have a fabulous dance number on the nightclub patio. Which strangely includes an elevated gazebo, a bridge, a short building with a very danceable roof, and various other spaces and objects which work themselves into the choreography. Oh, and every surface is made of a smooth grey material which is, coincidentally, just perfect for dancing.

Vera-Ellen is an incredible dancer, and Danny Kaye ain't too bad, either. It is a great number to a great song: "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing." (All the songs are Irving Berlin.)

Edith Head designed the costumes, and she made sure that Danny's socks and shoes matched the grey-blue of his suit perfectly; consequently, his legs look long since the line from pant to foot is uninterrupted.

All the gowns are beautiful, though you may notice that Vera-Ellen is always wearing a high neck. Even her pajamas have a stiff mandarin collar. You may also notice her teeny tiny skinny legs...Vera-Ellen was anorexic and the disease made her neck, especially, look bad. I guess it looked much older or really, really thin or something. I don't know, because you never see it in the movies. Sad trivia.

Vera-Ellen was a dancer, so she gets lots of dancing time. Rosemary Clooney, not so hot as a dancer, was a singer, so she gets lots of singing time later on in the movie. It is sort of amusing to watch knowing the actresses' strengths (and weaknesses). Vera-Ellen's voice is dubbed in the film, and Rosemary Clooney only does the simplest dance steps and usually just stands still while Vera-Ellen pivots and dips around her.

Everything is going great at the nightclub until the sheriff shows up and claims that the Haynes Sisters owe money to their landlord. Phil thinks of a plan that will stall the sheriff and allow Betty and Judy to escape the nightclub. Phil gives Judy two train tickets (meant for he and Bob) and begins the rather difficult task of convincing Bob to go along with his scheme. And this is his plan:

They lip synch the "Sisters" song so that the sheriff (in an office in the nightclub) thinks the girls are performing. It is an amusing scene.

Bob and Phil barely get away and catch their train. Phil begins trying to convince Bob to go to Vermont instead of New York City. (The Haynes Sisters are booked at a ski resort in Vermont over Christmas.) The sisters are on the same train: they meet the men in the gorgeous club car, sing a fun song about snow, and Bob is convinced that Vermont is where they should go.

But there is no snow in Vermont! And guess who runs the ski resort? The general from WWII! But since there is no snow, the resort is just about bankrupt. The sisters and the buddies must concoct a plan to save the resort and therefore save the general. Naturally, their plan is to put on a show! On Christmas Eve! Hurray!

The rest of the movie is a lot of wonderful song and dance scenes (rehearsals, ostensibly, and some less extravagant "private" numbers):

Bob, Phil, and Betty sing, and Vera dances in the super-random "Mandy" song.

I always wanted red sequined gloves like she has...And her train detaches!

She was a remarkable dancer. Acrobatic, she does loads of flips down the stairs, very quick, if you blink you might miss her turns and taps, and also balletic and graceful. She could do it all.

They sing about being in the Army:

Danny Kaye makes fun of modern choreography and Vera-Ellen does a frenetic dance with a male dancer who steps in to do more intense dancing when Danny Kaye won't quite do.

Bob and Betty sing to each other.

There is a lovely romantic subplot between the two couples, funny, funny bits, especially between Vera-Ellen and Danny Kaye, and then a dramatic schism which seems to threaten everything...A fake engagement, a colossal misunderstanding about Bob's motives for the show, a blow to the General's dignity...oh my. And still no snow!

This is a serious discussion. But I am always distracted by Rosemary Clooney's bright red lipstick. Wouldn't it get all over her pillow?

Not important.

One of my favorite scenes is Rosemary Clooney singing "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" in a New York City nightclub. Her black velvet dress with the scalloped neckline and mermaid silhouette, never mind the enormous diamond brooch pinned to her butt, is fabulous.

Add silver, sparkly gloves, a pink draped backdrop, white horse statues with feathered headdresses (it is the Carousel Club), and lots of odd, expressionless young men in black turtlenecks doing odd, expressionless motions around her, and you have a classic scene.

Bing Crosby does not actually sing with her in this part of the movie, but it is a nice picture.

Rosemary Clooney (yes, she was George Clooney's aunt) and Bing Crosby were good friends in real life and often sang together. They are great onscreen, too.

So for the Christmas part. The show is on Christmas Eve, and the finale is a Christmas-y number with a bunch of random kids dressed in Santa Claus inspired outfits or tutus. Not sure why the tutus and toe shoes...but I like it.

Surprise--they sing "White Christmas." Interestingly, Bing Crosby had made that song famous in an earlier film, Holiday Inn (1942). It could be a bit redundant--Bing singing "White Christmas" is heavily featured in both films. But he does sing it beautifully, and it is sort of his signature song.

A classic end to a classic musical. Great actors, great songs, great costumes, great plot, and great director (Michael Curtiz, who also directed Casablanca).

Merry Christmas!

Movie of the Week XVI

The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

I watched this musical when I was but a wee child and then rediscovered it a few years ago thanks to Netflix. It was actually one of the first movies I watched at Duke, which is fitting as the movie is actually about members of the Duke family! The movie is based on a true story--the life of Philadelphia millionaire Anthony J. Drexel Biddle. The screenplay is based on a play that is based on a book that Biddle's daughter wrote, entitled My Philadelphia Father. That daughter is Cordelia Drexel Biddle who became Cordelia Drexel Biddle Duke when she married Angier Buchanan Duke. Biddle Music Building, anyone? That is from this family. Oddly enough, one of Cordelia's brothers married Angier's sister, making a Duke Biddle instead of a Biddle Duke. That pair are the parents of Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. Lots of names!

Abbreviated Duke family tree: Angier was one of Benjamin Duke's children, (who was the son of Washington Duke and the brother of James B. Duke, the one who endowed Duke University in 1924). Angier was the cousin of Doris Duke. There is an Angier Buchanan Duke scholarship, the AB Duke, and a BN Duke in honor of his father. I believe Angier drowned in 1923.

Hopefully that was not totally boring for non-Duke people. I found it rather amazing when I realized that the Duke boy in the movie and the Cordelia he courts are those Dukes and Biddles! Especially since I was watching the movie in my dorm room at Duke, right across the quad from the Biddle Music Building and the statue of B.N. Duke seated in his arm-chair.

So...about the movie! It is a Disney film, so it has the same fun feeling as Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Pollyanna (1960), and Mary Poppins (1964). Trivia: The Happiest Millionaire happens to be the last live-action film that Walt Disney actually produced. It was the last movie he worked on, and he died before it was released.

The movie is about the Drexel Biddles, especially Mr. Biddle, but it veers off into a romance between Cordelia and Angier Duke. (As you can see in this poster, the emphasis is on Cordelia and Angier, compared to the alligator/butler/Mr. Biddle of the poster at the beginning of this post.)

The narrator of the film is an Irish butler who arrives at the mansion in Philadelphia and is immediately overwhelmed and yet intrigued by the craziness.

Mr. Biddle (Fred MacMurray) teaches a Boxing and Bible school in the stable and keeps alligators in the conservatory. He is delightfully unconventional. I love him in 1930s screwball comedies, and he is good in this, too. Thirty years later.

Mrs. Biddle (Greer Garson) mainly smiles at his antics. Garson was a marvelous and marvelously popular actress in the 1940s (especially in WWII movies.) She played a great Elizabeth Bennett opposite Laurence Olivier's Darcy in a 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, and she won a Best Actress Oscar for Mrs. Miniver in 1942.

Here are Mr. and Mrs. Biddle. A bit unfair to put this picture next to their more youthful ones...

When we meet Cordelia (Lesley Ann Warren) she is quite the tomboy. To remedy the situation she is reluctantly sent to boarding school to grow up and be "finished."

Her trashy blonde roommate teaches her how to flirt in a "Bye-yum-pum-pum" number involving plenty of strutting, hip shaking, mysterious glances, and references to Theda Bara, the sort of scary silent film star "vamp" who was popular in the teens. This movie takes place in 1917, by the way.

Cordelia goes to a party, armed with her new flirtation techniques, and guess who she meets? A dashing boy by the name of Duke! Angier (John Davidson) is adorable and really wants to go to Detroit and get involved in automobiles instead of going into that little family business of tobacco. Cordelia and Angier fall in love...awww.

There are some sweet songs then the requisite barriers to their love appear. Mr. Biddle doesn't want his little girl to leave (she is only 17!) and Mrs. Duke is not sure the Biddles are good enough for her son. Then Angier gets pushed into giving up on his dreams of Detroit and Cordelia gets tired of the social pressure, and the alligators escape...you know, the usual.

There aren't any fabulous songs that have become part of the classics catalog, but they are fun. The characters are wacky and the setting of the film is unusual and fun, too. If the romance doesn't grab you, there are lots of other things going on. The alligators' escape is rather amusing, and quite terrifying (to me), and the butler is a fun character. There is a nice bar brawl, too.

Sarah Duke, Angier's mother, comes off just terribly in this movie. She is snobby and rude and uptight, and she almost prevents true love! But she can't have been that bad in real life since the Duke Gardens are named after her.

Angier was also not quite as adorable as he is in the movie. This is his portrait.

I do not know if Angier really did want to go to Detroit or how accurate any of this is, beyond the fact that Cordelia and Angier did get married in real life. But it is interesting to ponder.

The Happiest Millionaire is fun and light like coconut cake. Yum. It becomes more interesting if you are at all into the Duke family or Duke University. There aren't a lot of (or any) other musical comedies based on the founders of my alma mater, so I think the movie is pretty cool. Great actors (though Lesley Ann Warren's spineless Rodger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella bugs me) and Oscar nominated costumes and a lovely mansion crawling with reptiles.

So if you are a Dukie, or are not that lucky but enjoyed The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968) (love it!) or were totally creeped out by The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964) (thanks a lot, Mom) you might enjoy The Happiest Millionaire.