Over the past couple of days, I've devoured three of the five DVDs in the Classic Musicals set:
"Ziegfeld Follies" -- The highlights, for me, remain the peerless "Limehouse Blues" and "This Heart of Mine."
Actually, I think a case could be made for "Limehouse Blues" being the first MGM musical ballet...at least in execution. I think "The Pirate Ballet" is the earliest "named" number that says, "Hey! This is a ballet!" But these numbers in "...Follies" were filmed in 1943...a couple of years earlier, at least.
In this film, and in "Till the Clouds Roll By," I was reminded of the delights of Virginia O'Brien, the deadpan muse. In "...Follies," she has that terrific "Bring on the Wonderful Men" number (which reminded me of the terrific "Wild, Wild West" number she has in "The Harvey Girls."). I wish I had access to more movies in which she was a featured player.
On Friday, I had planned on hitting a few numbers in "Till the Clouds Roll By" but found myself irresistibly drawn into the entire film. The music throughout is superb, definitively performed and often quite stirring. Dinah Shore's two songs -- "They Didn't Believe Me" and "The Last Time I Saw Paris" -- are wonderful. Interestingly, the latter song was an Oscar Hammerstein lyric written after he learned the Germans had marched into Paris in 1940. He gave it to Kern to work with. Less than 24 hours later, Kern had set it to the music we know today. It's first use in film was in "Lady Be Good" and it won the Academy Award. Here, Shore sings it as b/w footage of Paris in better days is shown in the background. Of interest is that the trailer (I think) shows Dinah singing the song without the video background...instead, there is an arty painting of the Eiffel Tower.
The movie looks wonderful, sounds incredible and remains one of MGM's splashiest musical treats. The story creaks a bit, but with 20 songs, it doesn't get a chance to creak very often. (The Van Heflin character of Hessler and his daughter Susie are made up...inventions...no such persons ever were in Kern's life).
Yesterday afternoon, I took in "Three Little Words" -- my first viewing in more than a decade, IIRC. The story is another "fabrication" since both Kalmar and Ruby had a terrific friendship/working relationship. It really irritates me to learn that MGM's writers made up conflicts to keep the movie "interesting"...going so far as to invent people and situations that just weren't so. I guess the conflict keeps things going, but I feel cheated in that I thought Kalmar was a frustrated writer of plays and screenplays...and he never did any such thing.
But the music is wonderful...still resonates to this day (for me)...and I continue to find Arlene Dahl simply sensational in this "musical" appearnace.
