Meredith Willson's second Broadway hit (the first and biggest was The Music Man) proved a lucrative vehicle for the equally unsinkable Debbie Reynolds. Based on a true story, the film casts Debbie as hoydenish Molly Brown, who wangles her way into Denver High Society when she marries "overnight millionaire" Johnny Brown (Harve Presnell). When the ...
In this entertaining comedy by Charles Walters, everyone seems to get in on the act, even the dog and especially the four overactive kids in a wildly challenging family. David Niven co-stars with Doris Day as Lawrence and Kate Mackay, distinctive parents struggling with home, life, and family. Lawrence opts for leaving his job teaching at Columbia ...
The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue, much like such early talkies as Hollywood Revue of ...
Esther Williams stars in this button-cute musical about a health-conscious family of swimmers who fall in with con man Windy Weebe (Jack Carson). The Higgins family decides to swim the English Channel in order to raise money to purchase a prize bull for their Arkansas farm. As she practices for the English Channel swim, Katie Higgins (Esther ...
High Society is a glossy Technicolor-and-VistaVision musical remake of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story (1940), decked out with million-watt star power and a Cole Porter score. Set amongst the rich and famous in Newport, RI, the story revolves around the wedding plans of socialite Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly). Tracy is all set to marry stuffy ...
Summer Stock represented Judy Garland's swan song at MGM. Garland plays the owner of a New England farm which entrepreneur Gene Kelly hopes to convert into a summer theatre. Gloria DeHaven, a member of Kelly's troupe, also happens to be Garland's sister. Aware that the farm is having financial difficulties, DeHaven talks the recalcitrant Garland ...
Inasmuch as the spectacular Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart Broadway musical Jumbo was written in 1935, this 1962 film version can't help but seem a little quaint. Still, the film features the original production's star Jimmy Durante, energetically recreating his stage role as circus owner Pop Wonder; it is Durante's bravura performance that saves ...
Viewers know they're in a 1959 comedy film early in the proceedings of Ask Any Girl, when secretary Shirley MacLaine is advised by her new supervisor Jim Backus to wear a sweater "a size too small." But she is a good girl: like Doris Day, she won't offer any carnal favors unless a wedding ring is part of the bargain. She targets irresponsible CEO ...
Fred Astaire had announced his retirement before the cameras began to roll on Easter Parade, but he decided to accept the film's leading role when its original star Gene Kelly became incapacitated. The thinnish plot, which finds Astaire trying to turn chorus girl Judy Garland into a star in order to show up his former partner Ann Miller, is hardly ...
This second film version of the DeSylva/Brown/Henderson Broadway musical Good News may not be the best of the Arthur Freed-produced MGM musicals, but it's certainly one of the peppiest. The film is set at Tait college during the Roaring 20s. The wisp of a plot involves Tait football-star Peter Lawford, who will be ineligible to play in the Big ...
Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith's Broadway hit The Tender Trap is transformed into a beguiling Frank Sinatra film vehicle. Sinatra plays a Manhattan showbiz agent, Charlie Y. Reader, who enjoys the attentions of several willing young ladies. At an audition, Charlie meets aspiring actress Julie Gillis (Debbie Reynolds), who is so determined to ...
Pretty stewardess Marcy Lewis (Jane Wyman) must choose between Three Guys Named Mike in this frothy MGM concoction. There's Mike Lawrence (Van Johnson), a science student who moonlights as a bartender. There's Mike Tracy (Barry Sullivan), a wheeler-dealer ad executive. And finally, there's Mike Jamison (Howard Keel), a handsome airline pilot. ...
MGM's new musical screen team of Esther Williams and Howard Keel were given plenty to do in the pleasant if unambitious songfest Texas Carnival. Williams plays Debbie Telford, one-half of a carnival performing team. The other half is Corny Quinnell (Red Skelton), who breaks up the act when he is mistaken for Texas millionaire Dan Sabinas (Keenan ...
A lesser Fred Astaire effort, Belle of New York is set during the turn of the century. Astaire plays a footloose and fancy-free playboy who falls in love with Salvation Army lass Vera-Ellen. To prove his worth to the girl, Astaire breaks down and gets a job. Naturally, there's plenty of terpsichorean activity from the two stars, but nothing truly ...
The Barkleys of Broadway became Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "reunion" picture purely by accident. Originally conceived as a follow-up to the successful Astaire-Judy Garland vehicle Easter Parade, Barkleys was to have starred Fred and Judy as a successful musical comedy team that breaks up when the female half decides to become a "serious" ...
Obviously inspired by such service comedies as Mister Roberts and Operation Mad Ball, Don't Go Near the Water is a tribute to those "unsung heroes" of WW2: the men and women of the Navy's Public Relations Department. Thousands of miles away from the shooting war, Lt. Max Siegel (Glenn Ford) and the rest of the PR staff spend their time issuing ...
Joan Crawford's first Technicolor feature has come to be known as a textbook example of "high camp." Crawford stars as musical comedy luminary Jenny Stewart, who has been hardened by the worst life has to offer. Romance enters her life in the form of her new piano accompanist, blinded war-veteran Tye Graham (Michael Wilding). The fact that Graham ...
Cary Grant made his last film appearance before retiring from the screen in this agreeable piece of fluff based on the 1943 comedy The More the Merrier, which dealt with the romantic complications inherent in the housing shortage in Washington D.C. during World War II. In Walk, Don't Run, the story is updated to a housing shortage in Tokyo during ...
Based on the story by Paul Gallico, Lili stars Leslie Caron as the title character, a 16-year-old waif who runs off to join a carnival. Embittered, crippled puppeteer Mel Ferrer treats Lili with contempt; only by speaking through his puppets is Ferrer able to express his genuine love for the girl. Before this happens, however, Caron must overcome ...
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