Today's edition of Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post is a technicolor musical from 1950 starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly called Summer Stock.
Jane Falbury (Garland) is a farm owner who is struggling to make her family farm a viable concern. Her long time farm hands have quit because they're not getting paid and Jane is in hock to the local hardware store for a new tractor.
Orville, the nebbish son of the hardware store owner, seems to think he's in a relationship with Jane. For her part, Jane is extremely uninterested.
She's got a farm to run.
She's wearing coveralls, for Christ's sake,
Running a farm runs into Broadway.
Abigail, her sister and wannabe actress, arrives at the farm with a theater troupe in tow. Abigail is engaged to play director Joe Ross (Kelly) and said it would be just perfectly fine to bring the cast and crew of his new musical up to the farm to rehearse.
No one asked Jane is it was perfectly fine with it.
She's got a farm to run.
Can you not see the coveralls?
Jane acquiesces to her sister to let the theater troupe stay but only if they help with the farm chores.
Which is frankly more trouble than it's worth.
Eggs are smashed, crops are trampled and the not quite paid for tractor gets wrecked.
Tensions between Abigail and Joe reach a breaking point and she leaves in a huff.
So what's a guy to do? The musical is almost ready and Joe is missing a leading lady.
Hey, who do you think he's gonna turn to?
Hey, it's a movie musical starring Judy Garland! Of course it's gonna be Jane.
But Jane's got a farm to run and...
Or not. Farm work gets put on the back burner as Jane throws herself into rehearsing and nursing her part because damn it...
Let's put on a show!
And of course, Jane and Joe will fall in love.
Because they are the stars of this picture show and the star must always fall in love.
The movie's most famous scene is Judy Garland's performance of "Get Happy". It's slinky, sexy and peppy as all get out.
It also doesn't quite feel like it's actually a part of this movie. It was filmed two months after the rest of the movie wrapped. And Judy Garland lost 20 pounds.
Sadly, most of the notoriety around Summer Stock concerns Judy Garland's travails and trauma involving her spiraling mental health and her additional to drugs.
Garland was terribly insecure about her performance and her appearance, particularly her weight. She was frequently late on set and her behavior was erratic.
Having had enough of the ups and downs of being in business with Judy Garland, MGM terminated Garland's contract in September 1950. Later on, studio head L. B. Mayer confessed he regretted making that move.
Meanwhile, during production of Summer Stock, Gene Kelly was being a dick.
Kelly reportedly only agreed to do this film as a favor to Judy Garland but otherwise thought he was miscast and the script was "a piece of crap".
Gene Kelly also got into fights with the film's choreographer because only Gene Kelly knows how to stage a dance scene properly.
Ultimately Summer Stock was a box office success, the classic type of "hey, let's put on a show" collaboration audiences expected from Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.
Audiences who little suspected the turmoil and troubles that went into bringing this picture to life.
Tomorrow is a bonus edition of Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post as we look at another movie musical.
As we go back in time to 1929 and the FIRST movie musical.
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