1h 55min | Family, Music | 13 April 1944 | Color
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Stars: George Murphy, Ginny Simms, Charles Winninger, Gloria DeHaven, Nancy Walker, Ben Blue, Lena Horne, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Hazel Scott, Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra.
Robert Alton ... choreographer
Jack Donohue ... choreographer (as Jack Donahue)
Don Loper ... choreographer
Charles Walters ... choreographer
Bobby Connolly ... dance director (uncredited)
Jane Hale ... assistant dance director (uncredited)
(How many choreographers to screw in a light bulb? Is there a 1-to-1 relationship between dd's and dance numbers?)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036673/
Amazingly good color, with NO 3-strip drifting that I saw. And the color design is of the eye-popping Technicolor variety.
In the Tap! Appendix for George Murphy. (I didn't see him go vertical as much as I'd like. See ch1 below.)
Warner Archive release: No chapter menu, 12 chapters at 10 min intervals. The movie is based on a play by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II. But the songs have lots of writers.
Dances or Song performances (not all of them):
- ch1: Near the opening, GM dances with a woman partner, and they leap side-by-side a few times, and he goes twice as high as she. And he makes it look effortless. So awesome.
- ch2 (late): some can-can dancers perform briefly in a nightclub
- ch3: GDH & Kenny Baker sing/dance a little
- ch4: While GS sings, male chorus dances ala toreadors with capes.
- ch5: LH sings/dances with black male/female chorus Brazilian Boogie. Love her.
- ch6: The Ross Sisters (3) sing Solid Potato Salad and contortion-dance-gymnasticize on farm equipment in the barn where... hey gang let's put on a show. (They're the farmer's daughters.)
- ch8: LH sings Somebody Loves Me, auditioning in the barn. LH + Gershwin = S'wonderful.
- ch8: HS performs w/band, supposedly in Harlem nightclub (we never see patrons), jazzing up some classical pieces. Love her too.
- ch10: GDH & Kenny Baker rehearse Pretty Baby in the barn. CW fantasizes how he and GDH (as her own mother) used to do it in the olden days with a biggish chorus and soft shoe dancing.
- ch10: Walter B. Long dances his only film dance. Fast tapping, Gene Nelson style arm/leg extension. Too bad we didn't get more of him.
- ch11: NW does a woman welder at home number with milk men BB, TD & orch. This is as close as they get to a war reference (that I caught).
- ch11: brief finale w/ various songs. Chorus girls are in Cyan/Magenta costumes, as was R.Hayworth's dress in Cover Girl ('44). GM dances, everyone sings.
Rochester doesn't get a lot to do. He's the servant to the CW/GM/GDH family. And he helps procure LH for the show and takes us to the Harlem nightclub for HS. But he doesn't sing/dance himself.
I wouldn't classify this as Family, since there are no under-age children in the film.
The story isn't fabulous, summed up by the synopsis atop this post. But we get lots of musical numbers (I left out some GS songs), so it's almost a 7.
MGM, dir. Del Ruth; 6+
