Words and Music
An MGM Picture (1948) Dir. Norman Taurog
Blu-ray: Warner Archive $21.99
The life of Lorenz "Larry" Hart (Mickey Rooney) and Richard "Dick" Rodgers (Tom Drake), told in story and song, with an all-star Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cast, in Technicolor, with all the songs and pretty girls in lovely gowns that you could hope for.
Well, to be honest, this is the “sort of” the story of Rodgers & Hart. I mean, how much accuracy do you want when a pair of Jewish guys, one the son of recent immigrants, are portrayed by Andy Hardy and the nice-boy-next-door from Meet Me in St. Louis? Still, considering what American mainstream filmmaking was like in the 1940s, MGM fashioned a more accurate depiction of Rodgers & Hart than some of their other "biographical" musicals (Night and Day is closer to MY life story than it is to Cole Porter's).
So, Hart was VERY short and smoked cigars incessantly and had a lousy love life and died young from pneumonia. That's true in this film and in real life, too. Uh, of course, he was also a closeted gay alcoholic who drank himself to death, but that sorta gets skipped over in this movie. You can't have everything. Let's get to the musical numbers, shall we?
Highlights:
Gene Kelly (whose star had first blazed in the Rodgers-Hart show Pal Joey) and Vera-Ellen dancing to Slaughter on 10th Avenue,certainly the sexiest dance sequence of its day.
Lena Horne doing The Lady is a Tramp and Where or When, but then, Lena's gonna be a highlight of any film, isn’t she? She brings down the house, and it’s as if she realized that her standalone sequence was going to be excised from prints of the film that played in the southern states, so she makes sure that they’d be cutting out the highlight of the film.
Perry Como and ensemble doing one of my favorite Rodgers-Hart compositions, Mountain Greenery.
Tom Drake's dubbed voice singing With a Song in My Heart.
Ann Southern doing Where's that Rainbow, one of the most over-the-top flamboyant dancing sequences I've ever seen.
This was Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland's final film together; they duet on I Wish I Were in Love Again and she sings a solo on Johnny One Note, both ironically from the Rodgers-Hart Broadway hit Babes in Arms but cut from the 1939 film version, which of course starred Rooney & Garland. Sad that this draws the curtain on their frequent screen pairings, and it’s daffy that she’s playing Judy Garland but he’s playing Lorenz Hart but playing him as if he’s Mickey Rooney only with a cigar. (Just as wacky, Perry Como plays Perry Como in the finale but somebody else throughout the rest of the picture.)
The supporting cast is highlighted by Janet Leigh as a romantic interest for Rodgers, and Jeanette Nolan as his mom (a much safer mother figure than she’d play 12 years later as the voice of Mrs. Bates in Psycho).
Lowlights:
Granted, we all know they made up the story of Rodgers & Hart, but Hart pining himself into an early grave for unrequieted Betty Garrett love? Really?
June Allyson singing and dancing with twin brothers in knight outfits. The twin knights I liked (sans armor, they’re in the Ann Sothern sequence as well), but June Allyson is majorly dislikeable in this (and just about any other movie she’s in).
The Blu-ray
Warner Archive certainly knows how to make gorgeous Blu-rays and the company remains a major reason that physical media, particularly for classic Hollywood films, are still popular.
The bonus material is impressive, including breezy, informative commentary on the film by film history Richard Barrios; deleted audio sequences (mostly Perry Como songs) and two deleted song sequences (Perry Como again, I heard he pissed off Louie B. Mayer something fierce; possibly, because this was Como's last MGM film); an hilarious Tex Avery MGM cartoon, The Cat that Hated People, and a rather staid but interesting 2-reeler called Going to Blazes! about the LA Fire Department, which seems to blame most household fires on careless housewives.
There's also a Panoram-type feature that lets you skip to the song you want, although oddly enough, they forgot Mountain Greenery.
All in all, the purpose of owning a film on Blu-ray is to have it on hand for rewatchability, and this film and presentation certainly lend themselves to becoming a perennial family favorite.
