1h 44min | Comedy, Musical | 10 June 1947
Director: Gregory La Cava
Stars: Gene Kelly, Marie McDonald, Charles Winninger, Phyllis Thaxter, Spring Byington, Clinton Sundberg.
Stanley Donen ... dance sequences
Gene Kelly ... dance sequences
bootleg, ok visually, but sounds like a fountain running throughout the audio.
In the Tap! Appendix for Gene Kelly.
The first scene has a very nice Astaire/Rogers type of romance dance duet with GK and MM, and she moved very well. She has 19 film credits; only 5 more after this; only 1 other Soundtrack credit in '44, not watched.
Only 3 numbers (one a medley) in the Soundtracks. In the second, GK dances with a dog and a statue (7ft young woman in mid-dance). Eleanor Powell already danced with a dog in Lady Be Good ('41, also MGM); the statue is big enough for GK to jump on in various ways.
The 3rd dance is GK with children, playing hopscotch, but mostly his dancing around the construction site, including some parallel bar work on 2x4's, seemingly very high up (3rd floor skeleton?), and flying between 2 buildings by pushing a ladder from one to the other (although I remember hearing on some commentary that this was a stunt man; the camera is too far to identify the face).
MM turns out to be a very confused person: does she want to be married or not, does she care about GK or not? He's able to manipulate her into pursuing him by insulting her, so she's not really worthy of his desire. But the moral of the story is that all those hasty war weddings should be upheld, and the marriages should continue. Not sure of the wisdom of that. Perhaps that's why America become even more materialistic in the 50s, and families seemed like empty shells. Let's all move to suburbia now.
Oh, yeah, the other big plot point is creating housing for the families of returning GI's, shared with It Happened on Fifth Avenue only 5 musicals ago (but that was an indie production), released mid-April. At one point SB says GK has a vision of rows and rows of 3-(bed?)room housing. Levitt Town here we come.
GK moves beautifully, as usual, and the choreography is good, except derivative as mentioned. Still belongs on the worthwhile dancing list because of the quality of execution. It's too bad GK never danced with Johnny Coy on film.
The 3rd dance is GK with children, playing hopscotch, but mostly his dancing around the construction site, including some parallel bar work on 2x4's, seemingly very high up (3rd floor skeleton?), and flying between 2 buildings by pushing a ladder from one to the other (although I remember hearing on some commentary that this was a stunt man; the camera is too far to identify the face).
MM turns out to be a very confused person: does she want to be married or not, does she care about GK or not? He's able to manipulate her into pursuing him by insulting her, so she's not really worthy of his desire. But the moral of the story is that all those hasty war weddings should be upheld, and the marriages should continue. Not sure of the wisdom of that. Perhaps that's why America become even more materialistic in the 50s, and families seemed like empty shells. Let's all move to suburbia now.
Oh, yeah, the other big plot point is creating housing for the families of returning GI's, shared with It Happened on Fifth Avenue only 5 musicals ago (but that was an indie production), released mid-April. At one point SB says GK has a vision of rows and rows of 3-(bed?)room housing. Levitt Town here we come.
GK moves beautifully, as usual, and the choreography is good, except derivative as mentioned. Still belongs on the worthwhile dancing list because of the quality of execution. It's too bad GK never danced with Johnny Coy on film.
MGM, dir. La Cava; 6+
