And "Love Is Here to Stay", summary writer! Both Gershwin.
(122 min) Released 1938-01-28
Directors: George Marshall, H.C. Potter (uncredited)
Stars: Adolphe Menjou, Andrea Leeds, The Ritz Brothers, Vera Zorina, Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy.
George Balanchine ... ballet: conceived and staged by
Gregg Toland ... (photographed by)
Genres: Comedy | Musical | Romance
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030194/
Hey, it's not just the poster that's in color; so's the movie! Complete with the requisite Color Art Director Natalie Kalmus (For the Technicolor Company) credit. (I think I read somewhere that it was part of her divorce decree from Herbert Kalmus, who invented the process, that she was employed by the Technicolor company in this consulting capacity. She really was involved in the color designs and the shoots.) The prior color musical on this quest (also the first ever, I think) was Dancing Pirate (1936), and I think only 1 other was produced in between (Vogues of '38). Here's my post on Color Films after Becky Sharp (1935).
I just took a few hours to analyze The Samuel Goldwyn Company, the studio I've been referencing as Goldwyn in lo these many posts (Eddie Cantor films except the last). Recall that in MGM, the G stands for this same Goldwyn. He was forced out of his first studio, then it was merged in '24 with Metro and they acquired Mayer as studio head. So this is his "reboot" as we say now. I don't know what kind of facilities Goldwyn had, but they didn't make many talkies: 64 total from 1929-59, only 6 during the '50s. If you scan through the list linked above, you can point out some possible contract holders: R.Colman, E.Cantor, A.Sten, J.McCrea, M.Oberon, M.Hopkins, G.Cooper, D.Andrews, T.Wright, D.Niven, D.Kaye, F.Granger. Also this film's Andrea Leeds made more than 1 film for Goldwyn. [It would make another good project to watch the Goldwyn catalog in sequence. I have many, and I know others are available officially. I like a lot of his actors.]
Why did I analyze Goldwyn? I tried to determine why he would make this his first color film. My answer: he made very few films each year, yet his name was well known. So I'd expect he saw the promotion value of making one of the few color films released by anyone. (Since Becky Sharp ('35), this is the 13th color film, out of more than 1,000 films.)
The Goldwyn Follies is widely panned (now; don't know about then.) The IMDb average rating is 5.8. A book declaring the 50 Worst Films ... by Medved ('78), listed this among them. (I checked the list, and some are movies I like, even rated 7.) I imagine that the authors had some strict criteria about budget and release, because I've watched worse films in this quest.
This film is a disappointment. It's a hodgepodge, and yet it's terribly Meta. At one point, the studio boss in the film (A.Menjou) says to his civilian advisor (A.Leeds playing the one-woman focus group) regarding an opera singer "You like her? I'll put her in the film." He's constantly trying to wrap the script around specialty acts that he wants to include. The accordion player is a running joke, because his role gets switched again and again, playing different ages (an old hunchback? "but I can't play accordion with a hunched back!"), costumes and hair. Maybe the art department thought the title was one of Goldwyn's famous malapropisms: instead of Goldwyn's Folly, they "corrected" it to Goldwyn Follies. Unfortunately, that sets the expectation of an imitation of Ziegfeld, which this is not. And Ziegfeld produced Broadway shows, so this is not caricaturing him.
Perhaps we don't get the joke because it's not exaggerated enough. If you're going to poke fun at movies that interrupt the story to bring on the next vaudeville act, then don't hire The Ritz Brothers, because they've already done that for real in several movies. Instead you need someone to PARODY them. (They're not totally wasted here, but they don't have a good dance number. And they can Dance.)
One of the numbers that I didn't appreciate was the Romeo and Juliet interpretation with dance, telegraphing West Story Story ('61) with R&J in tenements: one family dances ballet, the other jazz/tap. I can tell just from watching the jazz/tap choreography and their paltry screen time that they didn't hire a jazz/tap dance director. The moves are all ankles and elbows, like an urban hillbilly trying to dazzle a revenuer while pappy hides the hooch. Why, George Ballanchine, are you trying to make us dislike the Montagues? But then the skewering of Hollywood makes it almost worthwhile, when A.Leeds advises A.Menjou that she doesn't know R&J, and it's too sad. She wants them to live happily ever after. AND HE CHANGES THE PLOT.
Vera Zorina doesn't just dance, she also acts here, deliberately badly (although I don't know if she can act any other way.) One of the interesting dance moments was having her rise out of a decorative pool, actually dripping wet (until they cut and the pool is a mirrored floor, and she's more oiled than damp). Interesting since it foreshadows Esther Williams' movie career, which gets flowing in 1944 with Bathing Beauty. Busby Berkeley had done some water ballet before this (which Zorina does NOT do, she just enters and exits the scene in that small pool), but not a lot of Venus rising from the sea. At some point we get the Ritz Brothers in a canoe/gondola, poking fun at all the Venetian canal scenes we've had in musicals thus far, plus the Bros finally sink into the drink ala Zorina.
One of the problems for me is Kenny Baker. His tenor is too high/thready/unfeeling for me. I keep thinking "Gomer Pyle" when I look at him (I know, he was a baritone). KB gets the 2 good Gershwin tunes. As a Gershwin loyalist, I'm doubly disappointed.
Despite KB, the potential is there. Maybe this is poor editing, or lack of courage to charge full tilt into farcing the factories (of dreams)?
I'm glad I bought this. I tried to convert my Netflix ratings (5 max) to IMDb (10 max), and landed on 5 for this without really remembering it. But watching it in sequence among other musicals helps me appreciate it at some level.
Hopefully next round I'll read this first, try to capture more of the good points and analyze how it misses the mark. And try to analyze the cinematography: Gregg Toland helmed that (the tipping point on my purchase decision). But is this one of the 50 worst films from Melies to 1978? Nah.
I just realized: all that ballet, and I don't want to put this on my "worthwhile dancing" list. Even the Ballanchine creations were too tepid somehow.
Goldwyn, dir. Marshall & Potter; 6
