After last week's detour into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, our weekly Cinema Sunday posts returns to theme of Movie Musical May with not one but two musicals.
Starting us off this week is There's No Business Like Show Business from 1954 starring Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey, Johnnie Ray, and Mitzi Gaynor.
The title is from the song made famous in Annie Get Your Gun.
The story opens in 1919 and chronicles the ups and downs in the careers of Terence and Molly Donahue, a husband-and-wife vaudeville team. Throughout the years, their children, Steve, Katy and Tim, join the act, becoming known as The Five Donahues.
But as the kids grow up, they have other plans that begin to fracture the act.
Steve decides to become a priest.
Katy gets married.
And Tim....
Well, Tim is a lot to deal with, flighty and immature, he falls in love with successful performer Vicky Parker but then they have a falling out, Tim begins acting even more rashly, getting into a car accident that nearly kills him. And then after a row with Daddy Donahue, Tim disappears.
Everyone looks everywhere but nobody can find him and Mama Donahue is super stressed with her youngest son missing and World War II is happening.
And they're closing down the famous Hippodrome Theatre in New York?
Molly Donahue is booked for a benefit concert for the closing night of the Hippodrome where she performs "There's No Business Like Show Business" (Hey! That's the name of the movie!). With Terence and two of his kids watching backstage, they are joined by a third, little brother Steve in a sailor suit! He done gone joined the Navy!
With no planning, rehearsal or nothing, the Five Donahues are back in business (Show business, baby!) for the first time in years for one last time, closing down the Hippodrome with an epic, elaborately costumed and choreographed performance.
Oh God! This movie...
There's No Business Like Show Business is not a bad movie, per se. There's a low bar here as one might expect for movie musicals made in the 1950's: a frothy, colorful concoction that bursts into song at certain intervals for purposes of entertainment and little more than that. And this movie clears that low bar of expectation.
But barely.
Even from the perspective of 1954, it feels like the tropes and cliches this movie leans really hard into feel tired and dated. It almost seems like a parody for the "we're gonna make it in show business" formula.
A couple of saving graces for this movie are Marilyn Monroe who brings some desperately needed sex appeal as Vicky Parker and Donald O'Connor's energy and passion in the role of Steve.
Donald O'Connor once described There's No Business Like Show Business as the best picture he ever made. Since this came from a guy who co-starred in Singin' In the Rain, I can only wonder just how much of an asshole was Gene Kelly that Donald O'Connor could look back on his career and think that There's No Business Like Show Business was the best picture he ever made.
Let's jump back one year to 1953 for another remarkably inoffensive movie musical, Small Town Girl.
Super spoiled trust fund dude Rick is in a real big hurry to elope with self-obsessed Broadway star Lisa. So much of a hurry that he is caught speeding through a small town.
The town judge, in a bit of a snit that this jackass speedster has interrupted his Sunday dinner sentences Rick to jail for a few days.
Rick informs the judge he is super rich, his mother is a great person of significant influence and he is above being put in some small town jail.
By the time Rick is done, his sentence for speeding is now up to 30 days in jail.
OK, enough of all that. This movie is called Small Town Girl so who the heck is the "small town girl" the movie is named for?
Cindy Kimbell, daughter of the judge who hurled Rick into jail. So Rick is objectively handsome in the generic way white guys were back in the 1950's and all the girls in town are in a tizzy that such a dream boat is going to be staying in their town. Cindy has seen this self serving twerp in person dig himself a hole that her father consigned him to, well, she's not so impressed.
Watching from his jail cell window, Rick watches a town box social where various young women have prepared various boxed meals that young men can bid on. Hey, it's the 1950's and it's something men and women had to do to hook up before anyone invented Tinder.
Anyway, from his jail cell window, Rick wildly outbids everyone in town for Cindy's boxed lunch. It's step one in Rick's planned charm offensive on the judge's daughter.
Cindy is not so easily swayed by Rick's obvious ploys at first but allows herself to wobble when Rick bemoans he will not be there for his "poor sick mother" on her birthday and actually convinces Cindy to help him get out of jail for one night.
Yeah, Rick's working a con to hook up with Lisa.
But things do not go exactly according to plan and while spending time together during a night on the town, Cindy is starting to really fall for Rick. And it seems, he is falling for her.
Rick isn't the only one who has eyes for Cindy.
There's Papa Schlemmer, the old man who runs the small town department store.
OK, get your head out of the gutter! He's an old man, for crying out loud. No, he's angling to get his son Ludwig married off to Cindy.
But Ludwig is gay.
Hold on a minute, this is a movie made in 1954 and we don't KNOW he's gay. But Ludwig is a thin neat young man with an unbridled passion for musical theater and he doesn't really like girls.
So you do the math.
At his father's bidding, Ludwig proposes to Cindy, Cindy says "no" and Ludwig is so frickin' relieved, he skips and hops all over town in an extended dance sequence.
And your math is confirmed.
Anyway, both Schlemmer and Cindy's father are not happy about about this whole Cindy and Rick thing so the judge let's Rick out early, figuring the entitled jerk will skip town first thing and that is that for Cindy's infatuation.
But the film ends with a scene in church with Cindy in the choir singing the Hallelujah chorus but who should wander in but Rick and his mom.
And the end.
There is a single scene with Nat King Cole singing a song in a nightclub, a scene that would be easy to excise for Southern audiences (which is something studios would do). Otherwise, this movie is so... so... white.
A big loaf of Protestant small town white bread.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. White small town nostalgia might be hokum but if it's your hokum, well, enjoy the show.
Jane Powell (Cindy) was reluctant to do Small Town Girl. Pushing her mid-20's, Powell was tired of playing the teenage ingenue and was trying to branch out into more mature roles. But she was still under contract with MGM and MGM really wanted her for this movie.
Thank God for the leggy Ann Miller adding some much needed spice to this vanilla pudding of a movie as Lisa. Which is how we get this provocative movie poster.
S. Z. Sakall is on hand as Papa Schlemmer. Sakall was a Jewish refugee who stayed just ahead of Hitler's advance through Europe. Sakall made his way to Hollywood where he became a frequent and beloved presence on many movie sets. He earned the nickname "Cuddles" because actors and stage hands found him so gosh darn loveable.
(S. Z. Sakall played Papa Schlemmer as obviously Jewish but there he is in a Protestant church on a Sunday morning watching Cindy sing the Hallelujah chorus.)
The It's That Person Who Was In That Thing Department
- Billie Burke was Mrs. Livingston, Rick's mom. Yep, that's Glenda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz.
- Mrs. Gordon Kimbell, Cindy's mom, was played by Fay Wray, perhaps best known for being the object of a giant ape's affection in King Kong.
For next week's Cinema Sunday, I will double up again for another pair of movie musicals.
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