Favorite MGM musicals — Page 8

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It is quite a look ...

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Sorta like something the munchkins would have worn!

(very "Inside Daisy Clover" costume)

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Omigod, 'Quise, have you NEVER seen Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover?

You're in for another 'mo-making treat!

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Actually, I think it's overrated. That song, for example, is one of the worst ever written. Wood, as always, is great to watch, though.

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Another Cookie in my life used to love "For Me and My Gal". :)

AndyHardy, I don't think people know that we have our names on a brick in Grand Rapids, do they?

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Gosh..I can't believe I'm so late to post on this thread. Where do I start?

BORN TO DANCE - you want to know why Eleanor Powell was a star? This will tells you why. Great Cole Porter score. And Frances Langford singing "Swingin' the Jinx Away".

BEST FOOT FORWARD - I never liked sweetsie-neatsie June Allyson until this movie. Shes very bratty and funny in it. Ditto sexy Gloria DeHaven. And it HAS to be good - it has both Nancy Walker AND Virginia Weidler (amazingly enough, it's her last movie I think). I think it's Lucy's first MGM movie after her years of semi-stardom as RKO's "Queen of the Bs". And she looks awesome in Technicolor! And it features one of my favorite MGM musical numbers of all-time: "The Three Bs"

My favorite Judys:

EVERYBODY SING - Judy with Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks singing "Why, Because?", Breaking up her staid singing class by singing hot swing ("Mr. Mendelsohn's had his day...Benny Goodman is here to stay!"..."But I can't help it. Really I can't! Everytime I hear music..it just DOES something to me!"). Billie Burke (a year before Glinda) plays Judy's madcap mom.

BABES ON BROADWAY - the "ne plus ultra" of Mickey & Judy. She is SO pretty in it and for once doesn't mope and pout over being ignored by Mickey. Wonderful songs ("How About You?", "Hoe Down", "Chin Up, Cheerio, Carry On"), great Berkeley staging, Mickey Rooney is drag as Carmen Miranda (singing "Mama Yo Quiero") and even though that jaw-dropping blackface finale ("Go and tell New York to grab a piece of cork, and join that Blackout over Broadway! Ev'rybody's Gonna Be dancin' on air When they hear 'em playin' 'Swanee River' in Times Square") is SO tasteless...it's also SO fabulous, with Judy at her thrilling, belting best in "Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones".

IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME - In most of Judy's later MGM films she looks thin and unwell. This is the exception. She's funny and has wonderful chemistry with Van Johnson (though I am sorry "Last Night When We Were Young" was cut), and her "Merry Christmas" song is a forgotten gem.

Post-Judy:

I LOVE MELVIN - Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor team up right after "Singin' in the Rain" to make this lower-budget, tuneful musical with a great, underrated score by Mack Gordon & Joseph Myrow. Highlights include "A Lady Loves" ("And she adores the subtle phrase that it's the man who pays") and cute little Donna Cocohran singing "Life Has Its Funny Little Ups And Downs".

GIVE A GIRL A BREAK - My favorite little known MGM musical, this has yet another super, under-rated score by Ira Gershwin & Burton Lane and stars Debbie, Bob Fosse and Marge and Gower Champion. (Fosse AND Champion..amazing. Gower Champion's ass - a work of art) It also features the terrific dancer Helen Wood (kind of a B-Charisse) who later earned fame of another sort by appearing in DEEP THROAT.

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Now, lets see...where was I.. Ahem..Heath....Uh...Oh Yes:

HONORABLE MENTION:

THE DEVIL'S CABARET - the raunchy 1930 MGM Techicolor musical short just turned up a few years ago. Of several dozen of these mini-musical color shorts that MGM made at this time, it's the only one that survives. It's funny, fresh and VERY Pre-code. Satan is finding Hades depressingly depleted and decides he needs to recruit new members. He gets it by means of a swank Art Deco nightclub, of course. Enticing a crowd, the devil chases away a prim fundementalist preacher by offering wild jazz delights to a group of starchily dressed Puritan girls. They strip to their bras and frilly panties, squeal "I've got to get hot!" and do a lot of synchronized shaking while saxes moan. Once there - they get there by sliding pond - (and after the Albertina Rasch dancers do a high-kicking number) the Devil puts all the men off to one side of the club and all the women to the other. When the patrons pout and complain, Satan giggles "Aha! That's the HELL of it!"

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Updated On: 5/6/05 at 10:29 PM

I'm not sure DEVILS CABARET is on video, PalJoey, but it turns up on TCM pretty often (but I find you have to stumble across it...I've never seen a listing for it).

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Helen Wood was in "Deep Throat"? That does not compute...

Well, whoever. SOMEONE on the set got wood.

not the most "pc" of pics, but the only one I could find...