1h 54min | Drama, Music, Romance | 7 April 1939
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Jeanette MacDonald, Lew Ayres, Ian Hunter, Frank Morgan.
Busby Berkeley...creator / director: finale number
Seymour Felix...stager: "High Flyin'" and "Madame Butterfly" numbers
(In the finale, we get drapes that remind me of the giant drapes in the wedding-cake extravaganza of The Great Ziegfeld ('36). I've had that feeling in other MGM films since then, I'm going to start documenting that, to see how much longer they persist.)
This is essentially the same story as the Jimmy Stewart / Joan Crawford pairing of The Ice Follies of 1939 (1939), released just a month earlier, also from MGM. The primary difference is the psychological health of the JS character in Ice Follies versus the alcoholic reaction of the Lew Ayres character here.
Both begin with a married couple struggling to make it in show biz. The wife ascends first, leaving the husband not much to do. Both husbands are more creative behind the scenes than their performing wives. In Ice Follies, JS leaves her, explaining that he needs to establish himself in his own career path before they can function together. He does, and they do.
Here, LA just goes into repeated alcoholic rages until JM leaves and divorces him. Then LA's mentor/friend convinces him use his emotional pain to write great music. He works without telling JM of his efforts, so she falls in love with another and plans to remarry. LA shows up on the eve of her marriage trip, and coincidentally JM's producer is the one who bought LA's composition. The producer claims only JM can sing it, blackmailing her into helping her ex-husband establish his first success. She postpones her 2nd wedding, makes a hit, and her would-be husband leaves her (good for him, but he had to get drunk first.)
During the elaborate finale of the stage musical, JM spots ex-husband LA onstage playing piano, and seems elated. She doesn't yet know that New Man has left her, but LA does. We get no denouement; the ending is quite open.
The music is good, as is JM's singing, of course. Nice to hear her sing Un Bel Di from Butterfly. We do get a lot of "dancing" in the finale, which is more surreal than normal; dancers limply jitterbugging behind masks. But it's a b/w spectacle, very cinematic (although it's supposed to be a theatrical production, but we allow that in musicals). Oh, right, BB designed it. I don't think I've seen anything this surreal since Lullaby of Broadway in Gold Diggers of '35, also by BB. Good stuff.
My lack of enthusiasm is rooted in the mean, sick actions and feelings of the Lew Ayres character, and JM's extended tolerance of it. This is a sick couple, and just when she was about to break free, she sacrifices her happiness for him again. Also sick: the producer who emotionally blackmails her into it. He said (earlier, seemingly good-natured) that her decision to marry and quit the business would cost him a million. And he found his vehicle to prevent those losses. The weird part is that bumbler Frank Morgan plays this producer, so it seems extra mean. If it were Adolph Menjou or Warren William, we'd expect him to shrewdly turn events in his own favor.
In the book Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer by Scott Eyman, page 420,
Contrary to everyone's expectations, Schary got on fairly well with the old guard around Mayer. "The greatest beef they had with him was his predilection for making pictures with a message," said Armand Deutsch. "Mervyn LeRoy would actually say, "If you want to send a message, go to Western Union.'"
Dore Schary rose to power at MGM around 1948. I don't see a date attached to this quote, but it's at least a decade hence from this pair of movies. Director/producer LeRoy was not attached to either film.
Lew Ayres was so good at playing weak characters (see him also as the weak brother in Holiday ('38)), it's hard to believe that he starred in the series of feature films as Dr. Kildare, the antecedent to Richard Chamberlain's '61 TV series.
Clearly MGM had a message: two-career couples within show biz will suffer terrible hardship, certainly when the woman is successful first. I couldn't help wondering if we're any healthier today? Women still don't earn the same as men for similar jobs...
MGM, dir. Leonard; 6+
