As the lights came up at the end of MGM's Lady Be Good (1941), directed by Norman Z. McLeod with dance sequences by Busby Berkeley, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladymondegreen turned to me and said, "Is there such a thing as anti-romantic comedy? Because I think that was it."
It's a fair question to ask of a movie whose A-plot tracks the marital travails of a woman who discovers that the only way she can live and work with her husband is not to marry him. So long as they're independent operators, lyricist Ann Sothern and composer Robert Young are an unstoppable hit machine, madly in love and easily distracted into all-nighter bouts of mutually inspiring creativity which are probably some kind of metaphor; once legally tied, however, Young wants nothing better than to blow off his Broadway commitments with his loving wife and swank around on the piano for an admiring lineup of society dames who pronounce him "Too, too divine," which is probably also some kind of metaphor. As more than one of their friends wryly notes, "You don't run after a streetcar once you've caught it." They divorce once and it's the right idea, but then they can't stop having make-up songwriting; they remarry and things get really convoluted, so the Production Code has to preserve at least a fig leaf of the sanctity of marriage in order to pull off the finale. In and among the will-they-won't-they-no-really-should-they shenanigans, the leads get to put over such legitimately catchy numbers as "Oh, Lady Be Good!" and "You'll Never Know" (the songs of Dixie Donegan and Eddie Crane are supplied in real life by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II,1 and Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed; technically the film is based on the Gershwins' 1924 Broadway musical of the same name, although since it jettisons the entire plot and all but two of the songs, not to mention both Astaires, I would call it a rights grab rather than a screen version) and the supporting cast have fun with their bits of business, also mostly musical. Song-plugger Red Skelton and his stonefaced girlfriend Virgina O'Brien are the kind of background weirdness I'd have liked to see more of, especially when the main plot was winding itself up with implausible comedy of remarriage. John Carroll is unobjectionable as the radio baritone who records most of the hits and I have no idea why he was romantically paired with Eleanor Powell when she has much better chemistry with the rather astonishing spotted terrier with whom she rehearses an increasingly acrobatic tap routine. Naturally her dancing is the climax of the briefly excerpted but stunning show-within-a-show which Eddie bails on to devote himself to symphony-writing ("Real music speaks a language more eloquent than words!" he proclaims before getting absolutely nowhere) but Dixie sticks with to the much more rewarding returns of "Fascinating Rhythm" and tickets going for $5.50 at the Melody Box Theatre, which made me nostalgic for an economy I've never lived in until I calculated the inflation. I think Lionel Barrymore came down on the right side of not being a conservative jerk in the final act, but it was close.
Despite Berkeley's independent credit as dance director, I'm not sure how much of him we would have seen in this movie if we hadn't been looking. Most of the musical numbers are filmed naturalistically; none of them involved intricately arranged ladies. The most stylized sequence is a montage tracking the success of Dixie and Eddie's "Lady Be Good," which intercuts and overlays succeeding performances of the song—everywhere from nightclubs to shoeshines—with stop-motion of records piling up and sheet music flying off the counters and the song's spotlit title sliding up the hit parade. It feels of a piece with his usual treatment of human bodies as movable components of a pattern, but notably does not feature any as such. The other standout is the aforementioned production of "Fascinating Rhythm," for which I believe Powell did her own choreography, though I can see the staging as Berkeley's: endlessly receding layers of enormous, pale billowing curtains behind which are concealed glossy black concert pianos2 which wheel away as Powell taps her way back to a full orchestra and the cyclotron of a city nightscape, all in one breath-holding tracking shot. Eventually some geometry comes into play with a chorus of male dancers and their symmetrically swaying canes, but since they finish by slinging Powell head over heels in the same crowd acrobatics as Born to Dance (1936) or Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), I associate them as much with her aesthetic as his. I don't think he did anything with the Berry Brothers except keep a camera on them, either, but since that means the jaw-dropping flash dancing of Ananias, James, and Warren Berry was preserved for future generations including me, I'm thankful for it. They have two numbers in Lady Be Good; I dialed up the second forderspatchel as soon as he got home and his response was the gratifyingly awed "Insane kinetics!" They are pyrotechnic. I had never before seen some of their moves outside of ice skating (or, in their earlier number, breakdancing). The internet tells me that they once faced off against the Nicholas Brothers in a dance-off at the Cotton Club and I don't care who won, I just wish there was footage. I mean, good grief. I'm just sorry it was not racially permissible for Powell and the Berry Brothers to dance together, as Gene Kelly would later insist on doing with the Nicholas Brothers in The Pirate (1948). I think about the possibilities and I wonder if the film stock could have taken it or if it would have just melted.
I regret nothing about having seen Lady Be Good: I just don't want to make any great claims for it as a lost classic of the Freed Unit, like It's Always Fair Weather (1955) or Invitation to the Dance (1956). I imprinted on Robert Young years ago with The Canterville Ghost (1944) and The Enchanted Cottage (1945) and from this movie I mostly learned that he can sing and he can't save a jealousy scene, although his pratfall over an armchair goes a long way toward trying. Ann Sothern was new to me; she can really sing and I would have happily watched the other movie in which she ends up living permanently with Eleanor Powell's Marilyn and Buttons the terpsichorean terrier. She has a nice rapport with Young nonetheless, which means I should probably check out her much brassier, defining turn in Maisie (1939). I found a throwaway line much funnier from recently seeing The Match King (1932) than I think I was supposed to.3 I fell asleep slightly during the film's one fight scene, which I guess tells you my priorities. Under no circumstances sleep through its dance numbers. Catch them on 35 mm if you can. This judgment brought to you by my fascinating backers at Patreon.
1. Knowing the future history of American musical theater better than the characters, I was entertained to hear Young's Eddie speak enviously of such established songwriting teams as "Rodgers and Hart, Kern and Hammerstein—oh, what's the use? There are a dozen more." This is your usual reminder that while Rodgers and Hammerstein may have reconceived the form and relevance of the American musical, you will pry the back catalogue of Rodgers and Hart from my romantic, cynical fingers.
2. The pianists are also black. I can't tell if it's because they're playing jazz, or for the visual contrast, or if there is some other embedded coding I can't read.
3. Asked under oath to give her assessment of Dixie and Eddie's relationship, Marilyn says, "I thought the match was made in heaven."–"But it didn't work out that way?" Barrymore's judge presses. "No, sir," Marilyn responds ruefully, "I'm afraid they still make most of the matches in Sweden."
ladymondegreen turned to me and said, "Is there such a thing as anti-romantic comedy? Because I think that was it."It's a fair question to ask of a movie whose A-plot tracks the marital travails of a woman who discovers that the only way she can live and work with her husband is not to marry him. So long as they're independent operators, lyricist Ann Sothern and composer Robert Young are an unstoppable hit machine, madly in love and easily distracted into all-nighter bouts of mutually inspiring creativity which are probably some kind of metaphor; once legally tied, however, Young wants nothing better than to blow off his Broadway commitments with his loving wife and swank around on the piano for an admiring lineup of society dames who pronounce him "Too, too divine," which is probably also some kind of metaphor. As more than one of their friends wryly notes, "You don't run after a streetcar once you've caught it." They divorce once and it's the right idea, but then they can't stop having make-up songwriting; they remarry and things get really convoluted, so the Production Code has to preserve at least a fig leaf of the sanctity of marriage in order to pull off the finale. In and among the will-they-won't-they-no-really-should-they shenanigans, the leads get to put over such legitimately catchy numbers as "Oh, Lady Be Good!" and "You'll Never Know" (the songs of Dixie Donegan and Eddie Crane are supplied in real life by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II,1 and Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed; technically the film is based on the Gershwins' 1924 Broadway musical of the same name, although since it jettisons the entire plot and all but two of the songs, not to mention both Astaires, I would call it a rights grab rather than a screen version) and the supporting cast have fun with their bits of business, also mostly musical. Song-plugger Red Skelton and his stonefaced girlfriend Virgina O'Brien are the kind of background weirdness I'd have liked to see more of, especially when the main plot was winding itself up with implausible comedy of remarriage. John Carroll is unobjectionable as the radio baritone who records most of the hits and I have no idea why he was romantically paired with Eleanor Powell when she has much better chemistry with the rather astonishing spotted terrier with whom she rehearses an increasingly acrobatic tap routine. Naturally her dancing is the climax of the briefly excerpted but stunning show-within-a-show which Eddie bails on to devote himself to symphony-writing ("Real music speaks a language more eloquent than words!" he proclaims before getting absolutely nowhere) but Dixie sticks with to the much more rewarding returns of "Fascinating Rhythm" and tickets going for $5.50 at the Melody Box Theatre, which made me nostalgic for an economy I've never lived in until I calculated the inflation. I think Lionel Barrymore came down on the right side of not being a conservative jerk in the final act, but it was close.
Despite Berkeley's independent credit as dance director, I'm not sure how much of him we would have seen in this movie if we hadn't been looking. Most of the musical numbers are filmed naturalistically; none of them involved intricately arranged ladies. The most stylized sequence is a montage tracking the success of Dixie and Eddie's "Lady Be Good," which intercuts and overlays succeeding performances of the song—everywhere from nightclubs to shoeshines—with stop-motion of records piling up and sheet music flying off the counters and the song's spotlit title sliding up the hit parade. It feels of a piece with his usual treatment of human bodies as movable components of a pattern, but notably does not feature any as such. The other standout is the aforementioned production of "Fascinating Rhythm," for which I believe Powell did her own choreography, though I can see the staging as Berkeley's: endlessly receding layers of enormous, pale billowing curtains behind which are concealed glossy black concert pianos2 which wheel away as Powell taps her way back to a full orchestra and the cyclotron of a city nightscape, all in one breath-holding tracking shot. Eventually some geometry comes into play with a chorus of male dancers and their symmetrically swaying canes, but since they finish by slinging Powell head over heels in the same crowd acrobatics as Born to Dance (1936) or Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), I associate them as much with her aesthetic as his. I don't think he did anything with the Berry Brothers except keep a camera on them, either, but since that means the jaw-dropping flash dancing of Ananias, James, and Warren Berry was preserved for future generations including me, I'm thankful for it. They have two numbers in Lady Be Good; I dialed up the second for
derspatchel as soon as he got home and his response was the gratifyingly awed "Insane kinetics!" They are pyrotechnic. I had never before seen some of their moves outside of ice skating (or, in their earlier number, breakdancing). The internet tells me that they once faced off against the Nicholas Brothers in a dance-off at the Cotton Club and I don't care who won, I just wish there was footage. I mean, good grief. I'm just sorry it was not racially permissible for Powell and the Berry Brothers to dance together, as Gene Kelly would later insist on doing with the Nicholas Brothers in The Pirate (1948). I think about the possibilities and I wonder if the film stock could have taken it or if it would have just melted.I regret nothing about having seen Lady Be Good: I just don't want to make any great claims for it as a lost classic of the Freed Unit, like It's Always Fair Weather (1955) or Invitation to the Dance (1956). I imprinted on Robert Young years ago with The Canterville Ghost (1944) and The Enchanted Cottage (1945) and from this movie I mostly learned that he can sing and he can't save a jealousy scene, although his pratfall over an armchair goes a long way toward trying. Ann Sothern was new to me; she can really sing and I would have happily watched the other movie in which she ends up living permanently with Eleanor Powell's Marilyn and Buttons the terpsichorean terrier. She has a nice rapport with Young nonetheless, which means I should probably check out her much brassier, defining turn in Maisie (1939). I found a throwaway line much funnier from recently seeing The Match King (1932) than I think I was supposed to.3 I fell asleep slightly during the film's one fight scene, which I guess tells you my priorities. Under no circumstances sleep through its dance numbers. Catch them on 35 mm if you can. This judgment brought to you by my fascinating backers at Patreon.
1. Knowing the future history of American musical theater better than the characters, I was entertained to hear Young's Eddie speak enviously of such established songwriting teams as "Rodgers and Hart, Kern and Hammerstein—oh, what's the use? There are a dozen more." This is your usual reminder that while Rodgers and Hammerstein may have reconceived the form and relevance of the American musical, you will pry the back catalogue of Rodgers and Hart from my romantic, cynical fingers.
2. The pianists are also black. I can't tell if it's because they're playing jazz, or for the visual contrast, or if there is some other embedded coding I can't read.
3. Asked under oath to give her assessment of Dixie and Eddie's relationship, Marilyn says, "I thought the match was made in heaven."–"But it didn't work out that way?" Barrymore's judge presses. "No, sir," Marilyn responds ruefully, "I'm afraid they still make most of the matches in Sweden."
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